Google likely to launch payment app ‘Tez’ in India

New Delhi, Sep 14 (IANS) Joining the digital payment bandwagon in India, Google is reportedly launching a Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-based digital payment service called "Tez" as early as next week.

According to The-Ken.com, on September 18, "Google, Alphabet Inc's subsidiary, will make an entry into India's fast growing and super competitive digital payment ecosystem".

According to the website, Google is launching "Tez" (meaning fast in Hindi) which is more like Android Pay.

Google is yet to comment on this.

UPI is a payment system launched by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and regulated by the Reserve Bank of India which facilitates the instant fund transfer between two bank accounts on the mobile platform.

Other big player to join India's growing digital payment market is Facebook-owned WhatsApp.

WhatsApp has been in the news for working towards a UPI-based interface on its platform.

According to media reports, the leading messaging platform is already in talks with the NPCI and a few banks to facilitate financial transactions via UPI.

According to the blog website "WABetaInfo", WhatsApp is giving shape to its plans towards bank-to-bank transfer using the UPI system.

Some mobile messaging platforms like WeChat and Hike Messenger already support UPI-based payment services.

The infrastructure of digital payments in India is expected to increase three-fold by the end of 2017 with almost five million electronic point of sale (PoS) machines, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) has said.

"We expect that by December, the number will actually go up to five million PoS, which means that the infrastructure for digital payments is going to grow three times in the short span of one year," MeitY Secretary Aruna Sundararajan has said.