Google Tez gains 12 million users in India, to introduce bill payments (Update: Bill payments now live)

More than 80 billers are included at launch, including Reliance Energy, BSES, and Dish TV. To add a new biller, users have to simply tap on New Payment followed by Pay your Bills. The app will automatically fetch recurring bills and notify users when a new bill is received and paid.

As an added bonus, every new biller you add and pay during the first month will come with a scratch card with a potential prize pool of ₹1,000.

Original story (02/19): Google has announced that its digital payments app, Google Tez, has hit a number of major milestones. At an event held in New Dehli, the search giant revealed that Tez will pass 12 million active users in India within the coming days.

The impressive statistic is made all the more notable as it comes just three months after the service’s initial launch. Back at the end of October, Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed that the UPI (Unified Payments Interface) had gained over 7.5 million users. It’s now well on the way to doubling that figure.

While the growing user-base is a decent indicator of the app’s early success, Google will be even happier with the actual usage stats.

At the event, Google’s VP of Product Management for the Next Billion Users program, Caesar Sengupta, said that the app has now processed a whopping 140 million total transactions. Not only that but the average transaction today is now four times higher than during the app’s launch period.

In addition, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) data suggests that Tez accounted for 70% of all UPI transactions between October and November. Sengupta also proudly announced that there are now over 500,000 (“5.25 lakh”) merchants on Tez, with more and more small businesses making and receiving payments through the service every day.

Tez is far from the finished article for Google, however, and the next big step was revealed by Sengupta at the Google For India showcase. Starting today, Google is rolling out a bill payments feature that will let Tez users fetch and pay for household and utility bills from major suppliers like Airtel, DishTV, Tata Power, ACT Fibernet, DoCoMo.

Sengupta announced that 70 billers will be live on the app when the service goes live covering national and state electricity providers, gas, water, and more. The feature will be rolled out in phases and users will receive a notification when it goes live in their region.

As well as promising further updates for Tez throughout 2018 at the event, Google also introduced the Android Go edition of Oreo – a streamlined version of Android’s latest OS designed for phones with less than 1 GB of RAM.