Following substantial growth for many of Google’s services in India’s market with the release of several Android innovations geared specifically to the country, the company has now revealed news about the state of its India-first mobile payment platform, Tez. The platform has only been available for around 10 weeks, yet Google claims that Tez has already processed more than 140 million transactions from around 12 million active users. Moreover, the company says that more than 525,000 merchants within the country are taking payments, paying suppliers, and transferring money to employees through the platform. Perhaps even better news for the company is that the growth of its mobile payments app has been used not only in major metropolitan areas of the country but also in smaller villages throughout the region.
Building on that success, Google has also announced some new changes coming to Tez over the course of the next several weeks. Unfortunately, there aren’t any solid time frames for the changes, but they should be more than welcome to current users and fairly attractive to those who have yet to try it out. First, Google plans to roll out the ability for users to pay their bills directly through the application itself. To begin with, Google will be adding more than 70 billers, which will include utility service providers and direct-to-home service providers. More than likely, the company will also continue to work on adding further partners following that feature’s initial launch. Once a billing agency has been added to a user’s account via the application, Tez will remember those accounts and will send reminders to users when applicable bills are approaching the due date. After making a payment, the payment status on those bills will then automatically be updated, to help users avoid paying on the same bill more than once. Taking the app’s improvements just a bit further, Google also says that personal monetary exchanges will soon include animated moments that are triggered by keywords. The company currently cites the keywords, “hello” and “India,” but there is almost certainly any number of other trigger words that are already included and more are will likely be added going forward.
For users elsewhere in the world, Google’s announcement also revealed that it will be looking into bringing some of its India-first services to other regions. Whether or not that includes Tez or even just some of the more prominent features found in the app, remains to be seen. However, as of this writing, it may be a good idea not to speculate until an official announcement is made since the company does have its own mobile payment applications readily available in other regions already.