Google debuts Tez, a mobile payments app for India | Hacker News Reader

Google debuts Tez, a mobile payments app for India

techcrunch.com

111 pointsajhai96 comments

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.

>>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.

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.

UPI is a private payment instrument. It has nothing to do with the Government. (BHIM is not a government app either, despite our PM promoting it)

You have an interesting definition of 'private'.

http://www.npci.org.in/

Maybe diversify the sources you get your news from?

NPCI is a private company majorly owned by Banks. This is why nobody except Banks is allowed to become a payment service provider - even though the protocol allows it. GP is right.

What is the use of UPI now that Indians have so many different types of denominations for transactions.

To start with you have to go to an ATM to get currency and the ATM starts charging after you do N transactions a month.

Which is what we did in the past and you know what they say old habits die hard.

> We need to teach people how to use these apps.

MPESA has been a huge success in Kenya, no teaching required. You just have to make it very secure and convenient.

Google really should have pushed this during demonetization. They are too late into the game. The market is currently filled with tons of UPI apps and most of them are half-baked.

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.

Yes, I was surprised because they already have the 'Google Wallet' in other countries. They could have just expanded that here with all the bells and whistles of adding your credit cards, debit cards etc. along with UPI.

I have a suspicion that these use the same backend and the new brand is for marketing purposes.

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.

It's for me, not for you. Opinion not generalised assumption.

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.

Getting a bank account as a student is stupid simple and your parent can transfer money to it. People were doing it for a long time in my campus, almost every student had an account in the bank in the university.

Also, can you define 'functional bank account'.

"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.

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!

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.

Why not confine this number to banking, then.

yes, just read the news that driving licenses have to be linked with aadhar. Phone numbers have to be too. Pretty soon it would be impossible to do anything without aadhar = end of privacy

With the heavy push for linking it almost everywhere, the government could also use it against individual citizens (dissidents) to cause "civil death" - can't drive, can't use bank accounts, can't study in schools/colleges, can't have a cell phone number, can't have a salaried job (where tax is deducted at source and PAN is expected to be linked), can't get pension...can't even conduct a funeral for a relative (this is the latest move - death certificates require Aadhaar of the dead or that of a close relative).

It's truly "one number to rule them all"!!! In the hands of an oppressive government, dissent can be easily stifled and quelled!

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.

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!

Regarding (2) there already was an idea for that. It's called PAN. Your comment seems a little disingenuous on purpose.

Not sure if you're from or are in India. Aadhaar is for residents in India, not just citizens. Anyone who's been resident in India for 180 days is eligible to get it. Since Aadhaar also has an "introducer system" where one can apply for it without any documentation but with an Aadhaar holder vouching for them, almost anyone in the country can easily get one.

The passport office accepts Aadhaar as proof of identity and proof of address. So any resident can get an Aadhaar and then get a passport, effectively getting citizenship!

Lots of countries have single (or even multiple) identifiers for every one of their citizens. It's not the end of privacy, it's business as usual.

Related, I wonder how the UK deals with their citizens not having a national ID?

We ask citizens to verify their identity with either passport, driving license or other forms of id alongside perhaps some evidence of bills that have been delivered to their address.

We would have had ids a decade ago if the government didn't try to tie it into an encompassing database that would have allowed the Home Office to perform joins between driving, health and police records at whim. Also that legislation would have explicitly allowed the Home Office to effectively repeal citizenship at a touch of a button as it was also going to be used as the only means of access to healthcare and benefits. If they'd been less greedy with the initial implementation they could have started down this road. If they had a track record of delivering IT projects we might have trusted them.

The main problem they have is the aadhar(the unique id) is linked with fingerprint and retina scans

Most UK government databases associated with identity are keyed by National Insurance Number ( NINO ) which is issued at age 15 years 11 months

It died in west long ago why not in third world if it can bring social upliftment?

The recent decision of Supreme Court about right to privacy will prevent this in future. I'm not sure about what exactly will happen to Adhaar ID but, we may see that linking-it-with-every-account thing reduced a lot.

I remember 1-1.5 years ago, the Supreme Court had asked the government to publish widely in print and electronic media to make it clear that Aadhar was not mandatory. It was never done. I don't really see a situation where the government would back out of Aadhar, regardless of supreme court rulings. The court has reiterated this many times but the government has shown that it does not care.

“The Union of India shall give wide publicity in the electronic and print media including radio and television networks that it is not mandatory for a citizen to obtain an Aadhaar card.”

Source: http://www.livelaw.in/supreme-court-says-aadhaar-act-keeps-u...

What's puzzled me over the years is that the Supreme Court has, in the intervening period, taken suo moto cognizance and action on other issues/topics, but hasn't really come down hard on the government about this. Despite media coverage on people dying without getting pension or food rations, the central and state governments have been pushing ahead to cut expenditure on welfare schemes heavily through this route.

But bank accounts already require Aadhaar, and Tez is linked with your bank account, so I suppose in a way it's already mandatory?

Unless an order comes from the Supreme court, you can conveniently ignore all these messages. So far, the Supreme court has not mandated mobile/payments app linking with Aadhaar. Given the recent win in the privacy battle, Aadhaar proponents will find it hard to mandate linking Aadhaar with every goddamn financial activity.

This. I don't understand why government is actively pushing their schemes, when supreme court clearly tells it to not.

Bank account is already linked so no need for separate link to Aadhar.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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

Imagine saying "both age" without the "bo"

That's actually closer to the voiced retroflex sound which Indians often use as their 'hard D', articulated further back in the palate, with the tongue rolled back a bit.

I was wondering about that. Tez means quick in Azerbaijani Turkish as well. It's interesting that it has the same meaning in a language spoken so far away.

I'm fairly certain the word is of either Persian or Arabic origin. It probably came to the subcontinent during one of the numerous invasions by Arabic or Turco-Persian conquerors in the Middle Ages [1]. You'd be surprised how many words Hindi/Urdu and Turkish (or Farsi) have in common.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urdu#Origin

Interesting. I was aware of Persian influence on Urdu. As a Persian speaker, I can understand the entirety of the national anthem of Pakistan without even a dictionary. But Azeri and Hindi is a not a combination I have encountered before.

Hindi and Urdu are mutually intelligible [1][2]. They use a different script and slightly different vocabularies [3]. But because of exposure via Bollywood and other media (my personal experience) most people who speak one can understand the other. Bollywood song lyrics and especially dialogue from movies from the 70s, 80s and 90s are very heavily Urdu-influenced (and in fact the movies even had credits in English, Hindi, and Urdu). Urdu itself is also spoken widely in India.

As someone who learned Hindi in school (i.e. didn't grow up speaking it at home) I'm able to understand Urdu reasonably well, but probably would do a poor job speaking it. I'd have to stop constantly and think of the Urdu equivalent for a certain word before using it.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_intelligibility#Dialect...

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi#Comparison_with_Modern_S...

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.

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.

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!

More companies? There are like 50 different apps for passing money around in India. Not to include Uber and Ola. The issue to be settled is onboarding merchants and fighting regulations.

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.

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

Tez means Fast or Speed in hindi.

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

Must be Arabic or Persian in origin...

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

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.

According to the Armenian-Turkish language researcher Sevan Nişanyan[1], it is of Persian origin, with a likely link to the Old Turkish "Tez", which means escaping. Going very off-topic here but it's interesting if you like etymology: In modern Turkish "Tez" means "in a short time", but also "thesis", which we borrowed from French who took it (ultimately) from Old Greek "títhēmi" which is evolved from the root "*dhē-" (to put) in the Proto-Indo-European language.

[1]: http://www.nisanyansozluk.com/?k=tez1&lnk=1

Etymology is a great hobby of mine. Another mind-blowing one is the Indian name/attribute 'Deva' and Latin 'divine' both had the same root. Funny to think that Indians and Europeans were once the same people, and probably mixed with the Dravidians to make the modern Indian.

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?

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

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

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

I read your comment and checked the app page. (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...) 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.

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.

Let's not assume Google just decided to break the trust of billions of users just to inflate the ratings of one of their apps.

Many possible explanations: different caching, some of the 1 star comments were by people who didn't use the app, bots, etc.

Right now I see 3.2 stars and doing the calc with the votes it is right

I install (iOS) and started the app, tried to verify OTP sent on SMS 7 times and it failed to verify every single time saying OTP is incorrect. Colleagues around me faced the same issue. They all gave up and I also quietly uninstalled the app. So maybe that's that.

Same here. SMS is not verifying. Initial glitch I guess.

Most negative comments are about people not able to add their bank account in the app but still getting deducted charges for verifying.

Some of the comments -

>> Edit - Moving to 3 from 1 as Google replied stating the official launch has yet to happen and the engineers are working on it. Just wondering why they made it go live publically prior actual launch. I wouldn't complain if they named it beta to begin with. Hopefully, after launch the backend will be straightened up and the app will work as expected. Crossing fingers. Unable to add bank, I just lost ₹1.5 multiple times by the app sending SMS for verification/addition of bank. Why did you pick this way of adding banks to the app when it could have been done differently?

>> Charges Rs. 5 during SMS verification. But can't even fetch bank accounts. #1 useless app for payments. Good luck if you still want to try and waste money unnecessarily

There's a ton of annoying stuff around bank accounts in India that makes doing anything online a major pain. Idk if this is Google's fault or the bank's fault in this case, but this is kinda to be expected :|

(AIUI there's a bunch of overregulation over online stuff that most online payments things don't gel well with. But I don't know enough about this, just have been bitten by it enough times)

It is already on TechCrunch[0], the Google Blog[1], and the Google India Blog[2]. If that doesn't count for an official launch I don't know what does.

[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/17/google-debuts-tez-a-mobile...

[1]: https://www.blog.google/topics/google-asia/introducing-tez/

[2]: https://india.googleblog.com/2017/09/introducing-tez-mobile-...

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

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

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

What is the difference between this and Android Pay?

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

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

> 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.

I see a lot of Uber drivers using Kannada for the entire phone here in Bangalore. Usage may be more than what is visible to us.

I've seen Uber drivers use Uber and Google Maps in Hindi, and I assume it would be the same in other regions for their regional languages. These things exist because there's a market for it.

I have not seen or used the app. Having the labels in non-English languages can be very helpful. Typing vernacular languages on keyboard with just English alphabet is complicated to say the least.

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?

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.

I myself am one who type using Google Indic keyword for typing local. In all my local whatsapp group majority of the conversations are in local language.

Might be good enough for somebody launching an app under a restricted budget, but Google usually tries to support all local languages, even rare ones, and Bengali is definitely not a rare language to use.

GBoard also makes it much easier to write Indic languages (transliteration from Latin etc)

Being an app developer here; the reality can't be further than this. From our figures atleast 30% of our base use it in their vernacular. English is only a good start; if you really need to penetrate the masses - localization is a must.

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

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

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

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