
Google debuts Tez, a mobile payments app for India - ajhai
https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/17/google-debuts-tez-a-mobile-wallet-and-payments-app-for-india/
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pvsukale3
I live in India. Many people have launched UPI based payment apps. Even
government launched an app called BHIM. It is really good. UPI is a really
good concept.

The problem: None of these apps is used by most of the vendors in cities.
Except for Paytm which is available with many small vendors in cities. They
used the demonetization period to heavily market the app by going vendor to
vendor singing them up.BHIM is really good but government needs to work on its
marketing. They can use college/school students everywhere to do the same. JIO
has granted access to fast mobile networks to common people. We need to teach
people how to use these apps.

~~~
kamaal
>>Except for Paytm which is available with many small vendors in cities.

No. I live in Bangalore and 'many' small vendors don't accept Paytm. They did
it momentarily as a last ditch effort to not see their business crash.

Cash has come back like no tomorrow.

Also you don't have to teach people anything, or provide any amount of free
internet plans. If they are smart enough to use WhatsApp and while away time
on the internet to do unproductive stuff they can also use payment apps.

The reason why don't use it because they want to cheat on taxes. That is the
issue. And its social and cultural in nature. Its not a technology related
problem.

~~~
eklavya
This is spot on. The resistance to online payments and the newly introduced
GST is not technical/financial it's because they don't want to pay taxes.

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subsidd
Not having a wallet option is a deal breaker.

Cashless payments is very popular amongst youth here and majority of us
college students don't have a functional bank account which makes us either
carry our parents debit cards or our parents "Paytm" us (yes, it's become a
verb here) our monthly pocket money.

Regardless of that, there is still a very poor adoption of cashless modes of
payments by street hawkers and kirana stores. And many high revenue businesses
I have seen going directly for card POS systems like mswipe etc as wallets
have some monthly limits and high fees for transferring to bank account. So
the competition for tez is with physical card swipes and seeing the overall
internet connection health even in the cities, it's a pain to use apps to pay
majority of the times.

~~~
ashwinm
No its not. Why do you want wallet when you can transfer directly from bank
account with same ease? 270 million bank accounts were opened under Jan Dhan,
mainly poor.

Paytm is transforming itself to payment bank and UPI provider.

~~~
cbhl
Lots of people are unbanked/underbanked -- that is where mobile payments (like
MPESA) shine. Assuming that everyone has a credit card and/or bank account is
a US-centric assumption that came about as a result of COPPA, and the big
companies miss out on getting adoption from teens, children, and people who
have been locked out of the financial system.

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owaislone
"Government of India has made it mandatory to link your Aadhar number with
your Tez account. Please link your Aadhar number to enjoy uninterrupted
service." \- Waiting for this to happen. My Indian friends say they are
getting these messages from the Income Tax department, their banks and even
their ISPs, e-wallets providers, telcoms etc.

~~~
amrrs
This is a story i'm trying to understand. 1. Indian Government wants to
emulate something like SSN (in the US) as a single identifier for every
citizen in this country. 2. This is an easy way for a Government to track the
actions of every individual digitally and financially - end of Privacy!

~~~
halflings
1) SSN is not really a model for a unique identifier for every citizen.
Immigrants have SSNs too, and can have different ones if they have done
multiple stays in the country. You also can live without an SSN in the US.

2) I mean... the government is entitled to know where your money is coming
from if they are asking you for taxes. otherwise, there would be no way to
combat tax fraud. This is not a new thing.

~~~
balladeer
But the way Aadhaar usage is being conceived by the Govt it seems to do more
with the "tracking" aspect of it than finding trails of money. In fact it has
little to do with the "money". For that we already have had PAN numbers (in
case of individuals) which are unique and the Govt and the Income Tax
department has record of it, so do the banks.

Also, the way Aadhaar has been handled by the private contractors (the way the
contracts were given are also very questionable), and the way they have gotten
unrestricted, unregulated access to it (and it doesn't seem someone has been
done to curb this) is really disconcerting as a citizen.

Then, there's "Snoopgate". It was hushed as if it never existed.

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amrrs
You are right. Remember those days when SIM card agents used to sell our data
to marketing firms (and use to stalk girls), when those kind of amateurs get
to handle Aadhar registration - the result would be data leaks!

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abhij89
As long as country doesn't mandates using cashless payment modes, launching
new payment apps won't help. Country already has too many such apps, with
google bringing another it will only eat the competitions share of profit,
instead of increasing the demand. Indian people still aren't very comfortable
with online payments. They still like to trade in cash.

~~~
eqtn
Currently UPI transactions are free (except for a few banks). So many are
transferring using this. Once they start charging the user for transaction,
this will drop. Even if the charge is .50 paise.

~~~
kamaal
The charge has to be 0. For one simple reason most of the everyday buying in
India is in the FMCG sector where profits are razor thin.

No one will be spending the profit equivalent just for a transaction.

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lapgrjigwvjjz
PS : It's pronounced like 'Taze' but with a soft T. It means 'quick' :)

~~~
tacomonstrous
FYI, 'soft T' doesn't mean anything to western English speakers. They have a
'T' and a 'Th', the latter of which is actually a fricative, and not really a
'T' sound in the strict sense. I guess an Indian 'soft T' is better described
as a more Italian sounding 'T', articulated mainly against the teeth.

~~~
Myrmornis
Is a soft T like the way some Americans say "water", i.e. with a "D" like
sound, as compared to the hard "T" in water traditional in British English?

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
No. It's a soft T the way Spanish or Italian speakers say their Ts.

~~~
njsubedi
Imagine saying "both age" without the "bo"

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atomicnumber1
The Problem is not the quality app but the adoption rate. There are already
tons of UPI apps available and none so far have been successful (Bhim, Phonepe
and paytm are top 3). Google is already is late to the game. So, If Google
wants this to make it hit, it really needs to heavily market it. Otherwise It
would be like another futile attempt to switch Indians to digital payment
systems, which currently, they are reluctant. I have high hopes for this one.

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uji
This is certainly good for India. I predict, over time, cash-less transactions
in India will increase, as more companies start investing in cashless
transactions.

~~~
Alterlife
This good for Google.

India is already going cashless. There are plenty of wallets and chash-less
apps spending money trying to buy market share. Every vendor and their younger
brouther has their own wallet app. You'd be hard pressed to find a shop
without a paytm or phonepe or whatever barcode at the window.

It's already happening. Google is trying to ride the wave, and the government
is trying to ride the Google PR wave!

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BilalBudhani
I've been using Chillr app for payments, And it has a great experience but
sadly there's a limit of 5k/day – which is ridiculously low if they want SME
to go cashless. Whereas, Google's Tez has a 100k/day limit which IMO would
work as a leverage for the app.

~~~
flyingf0x
Chillr app now have 1L per day limit on UPI, the other IMPS limit is as
mandated by the respective bank.

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vincengomes
Tez means Fast or Speed in hindi.

Fun Fact: In the 1994 Keanu Reeves movie the number plate for his car is 646
TEZ.

~~~
senatorobama
Must be Arabic or Persian in origin...

~~~
theptip
Persian and Hindi are both Indo-European languages, so they share a common
root.

(Arabic isn't in that language family).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-
European_languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages)

~~~
Manishearth
Languages don't only derive from other languages in their family.

Hindi has both Persian and Arabic influences, so it could plausibly be Arabic
in origin. It isn't in this case, though.

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sidcool
I have downloaded it, and it's a bit clunky to work with. Hope they iterate
fast on this one. But I also think, this should not have been a problem since
I used Google Wallet and it was a superior experience. May be the teams were
different?

~~~
ashwinm
Google wallet don't have licence in india. Its an outdated concept to UPI
anyway.

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azhuesing
1)The question is, how to gain transaction in a market where employees ask for
paychecks over PayTM. 2)I wish the article would have mentioned India's ban of
paper money as legal tender. 3) Tez roughly translates to "fast" in Hindi

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prkvs
Not even a day and see the number of negative comments on the playstore.

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the_common_man
I read your comment and checked the app page.
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.nbu.paisa.user))
It had 4.5 stars. I was like what is this commenter talking about.

I then dig into the comments and there are a massive number of negative
comments. I am not sure what is happening here but the rating seems
artificially inflated. It shows that there are only 9 1-stars and yet in
comments there are way more 1-stars. Really sad to see this sort of gaming at
the play store level.

~~~
lurker-
I don't know how the Play Store commenting system works, but I think before
jumping to conclusions then it's important to consider that if there were any
foul play then it would probably have been better achieved through
"shadowbanning". I do feel it would make sense if the Play Store didn't count
comments made by newly registered users or known bots.

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relyio
The name is poorly chosen imho. This is going to create confusion with an
existing high-profile cryptocurrency project (Tezos, written in OCaml).

~~~
atomicnumber1
it's an Hindi word meaning "Fast" which I believe reflects the app
characteristics accurately.

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srikz
Ah, Google is using their Nearby tech for something directly useful! Still
surprised how little it (or similar tech) is in use

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djhworld
What is the difference between this and Android Pay?

~~~
khrm
This one uses an Indian method of payment called UPI which is inter-operable
with other banks app.

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eevilspock
What better way to invade the privacy of and collect data on another billion
or so people?

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akjdhfdf3723
> English, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu.

In all my years of living in India, I've not come across one person using
anything other than English. Most people, even in IT, hadn't the slightest
clue about how to type their own language into a PC. Didn't stop them from
being "proud" of <insert object> though.

~~~
avip
Not sure what echo chamber you live in. Many people in India don't speak, read
or write English. Most of them carry and use mobile phones. Why would you
exclude them from using the app?

~~~
balladeer
That comment is either just a low effort troll attempt or made by someone not
at all familiar with India and definitely not familiar with her linguistic
diversity. Or maybe someone with extremely limited existence in one of this
country's many urban bubbles.

In fact had Google launched the app only in English or English+Hindi I would
have been really surprised because they would been losing on the clear
majority of India - the rural India, 2nd tier cities, and town and below.
Internet is exploding there, clearly engendered by Reliance Jio and other
operators following close and in panic.

Also, the way Govt went all guerrilla on demonetisation (nationwide) and the
way Govt is pushing digital money the larger population, who are not at all
proficient in English, will have to come on board the digital payment system
(and in my humble opinion will have to suffer a lot because planning and infra
neither are well prepared; but that's another matter) and for the inclusion of
regional languages are not a smart move per se, but a must.

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dandare
I like how beautifully white are all the people in Tez ads. /s

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dandare
Yes, downvote me because I pointed out to blatant racism.

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josh2600
Not to be confused with TEZ the abbreviation for Tezos, the largest ICO
(cryptocurrency) ever.

