Tez was a

mobile payments Mobile payment, also referred to as mobile money, mobile money transfer and mobile wallet, is any of various payment processing services operated under financial regulations and performed from or via a mobile device. Instead of paying with cas ...

service by

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

, targeted at users in

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

, later folded into the new Google Pay app on 28 August 2018. It operated atop the

Unified Payments Interface Unified Payments Interface, commonly known as UPI is an Indian instant payment system as well as protocol developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in 2016. The interface facilitates inter-bank peer-to-peer (P2P) and pe ...

, developed by the

National Payments Corporation of India National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is an Indian public sector company that operates retail payments and settlement systems in India. The organization is an initiative of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Indian Banks' Associa ...

. The product was created as part of Google's Next Billion Users initiative led by Caesar Sengupta, former vice president and general manager, Payments & Next Billion Users, Google. Tez worked on the vast majority of India's smartphones (with apps for both Android and

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

) with the Android app supporting English,

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

, Bengali, Gujarati,

Kannada Kannada () is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly in the state of Karnataka in southwestern India, and spoken by a minority of the population in all neighbouring states. It has 44 million native speakers, and is additionally a ...

Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India **Marathi people (Uttar Pradesh), the Marathi people in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Mar ...

, and Telugu. There were plans to release the app in other emerging countries including

Vietnam Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

, and

Thailand Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...

. "Tez" is the Hindi word for "Fast". Within 37 days after being launched, Tez got about 8.5 million installations. Over 30 million transactions were made on the app as of 27 October 2017.

Service

Acceptability

Tez was accepted by PVR Cinemas, redBus,

McDonald's McDonald's Corporation, doing business as McDonald's, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational fast food chain store, chain. As of 2024, it is the second largest by number of locations in the world, behind only the Chinese ch ...

ACT Broadband Atria Convergence Technologies Limited, branded as ACT, is an Indian telecommunications company headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. ACT offers fibre to the home (FTTH) services under the brand name "ACT Fibernet" and digital televisi ...

, State government Electricity boards and was expected to be joined by a number of other businesses like

Dish TV DishTV India Ltd. (stylised as dishtv) is an Indian subscription based satellite television provider based in Noida. DishTV was launched by the Zee Group on 2 October 2003. It ranked #437 and #5 on the list of media companies in Fortune Indi ...

Jet Airways Jet Airways Limited, trading as Jet Airways, was an Indian full-service airline based in Delhi, with a training and developmental centre in Mumbai. Incorporated in April 1993 as a limited liability company, the airline began operations as an ...

and

Domino's Domino's Pizza, Inc., commonly referred to as Domino's, is an American multinational pizza restaurant chain founded in 1960 and led by CEO Russell Weiner. The corporation is Delaware-domiciled and headquartered at the Domino's Farms office p ...

Vodafone Idea Vodafone Idea is an Indian telecommunications company, headquartered in Gandhinagar. It is an all-India integrated GSM operator offering mobile telephony services. As of 30 September 2024, Vi has a subscriber base of 212.45 million, making ...

, Swiggy, Zomato,

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, a ...

Ola Ola may refer to: Places Panama *Olá, a subdistrict in Coclé Province * Olá District Russia *Ola, Russia, an urban settlement in Magadan Oblast * Ola District, an administrative division in Magadan Oblast * Ola (river), a river in Magadan ...

, Clubfactory, Zappfresh,

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

Flipkart Flipkart Inc. is an Indian e-commerce company, headquartered in Bangalore, and incorporated in Singapore as a private limited company. The company initially focused on online book sales before expanding into other product categories such as con ...

and many more businesses. Google was also working with existing advertisers and online e-commerce platforms like

Shopify Shopify Inc., stylized as ''shopify'', headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, operates an e-commerce platform for retail point-of-sale systems that offers payments, marketing, shipping, inventory management, transaction management, and customer eng ...

and payment aggregators like BillDesk and PayU. Google planned to add even more ways to pay on Tez (e.g., credit cards and wallets). Select phones from manufacturer partners

Lava Lava is molten or partially molten rock (magma) that has been expelled from the interior of a terrestrial planet (such as Earth) or a Natural satellite, moon onto its surface. Lava may be erupted at a volcano or through a Fissure vent, fractu ...

Nokia Mobile HMD Global (Human Mobile Devices) is a Finnish independent mobile phone manufacturer. The company is made up of the mobile phone business that the Nokia Corporation sold to Microsoft in 2014, then bought back in 2016 by former executives who f ...

, and

Panasonic is a Japanese multinational electronics manufacturer, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Kadoma, Japan. It was founded in 1918 as in Fukushima-ku, Osaka, Fukushima by Kōnosuke Matsushita. The company was incorporated in 1935 and renamed and c ...

would have come with Tez preinstalled.

Device compatibility

The app was compatible with the vast majority of Android and

devices.

Technology

The application did not require users to share any personal information such as mobile numbers or usernames like other payment applications. Instead, it used audio QR codes that relied on sound transmitted at a frequency inaudible to the human ear from the payee handset to the merchant handset. This technology does away with the need for NFC chips on the handsets, which gave it an advantage since a significant number of smartphones in India and other developing markets do not have NFC chips embedded. This was indeed a technology ahead of its time.

References

{{Digital payment providers Discontinued Google services Payment and settlement systems in India Android (operating system) software Mobile payments