Google's payment service completes one year in India, enables 860 mn deals

Google’s payment service has completed one year in India and during the course of these 12 months, the company has enabled over 860 million transactions. Google Pay, which was known as Tez earlier, has 25 million monthly active users and 1.2 million businesses in India.

“It’s been quite a journey since Prime Minister Narendra Modi and IT Minister RS Prasad called on Google to support digital payments and financial inclusion in India and a year since the launch of Tez by the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. But there is a lot more to be done,” Caesar Sengupta, Vice President, Payments and Next Billion Users, Google said in a blogpost.

Sengupta said barely a 100 million or so Indians are using digital payments and the company has over a billion more Indians to empower.

“We are excited to continue working with the government and industry players to innovate and bring the benefits of a digital India to everyone,” he said.

The digital payments space has grown enormously over the last couple of years, primarily due to the government’s efforts to boost digital payments. Google said it always has users’ privacy in mind, and people using its services will always be in control of their data. “We keep you informed about what data we collect, how it’s used, and why,” the blogpost said.

Google had partnered with Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and the State Bank of India for launching its payment service. “We made history together by building a first-of-its-kind, multiple payment service providers (MSPs) platform. And of course a huge thank you to the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for creating the infrastructure that enabled this,” the company said. Since the launch of Google Pay, India’s monthly UPI transactions have grown 18X to 312 million in August— making India one of the world’s leading innovators in digital payments.