Google Tez now offers the option of paying utility bills. Users will be able to pay electricity bills for BESCOM Bangalore, BEST Mumbai, CESC Kolkata, and Tata Power Delhi and Mumbai among several others, and gas bills for Adani Gas Gujarat, Indraprastha Gas NCR, and Mahanagar Gas Mumbai among others. They will also be able to pay postpaid mobile bills for Aircel, Airtel, Idea and Vodafone, as well as landline bills for MTNL in Mumbai and Delhi, and BSNL.
Other options include payment of DTH bills for Dish TV, Sun Direct TV and Tata Sky, and broadband bills for ACT Broadband, Airtel, BSNL, etc. Google Tez will also allow users to pay insurance premiums for Bharti Axa Life Insurance, Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, and Tata AIA Life Insurance among others. Some of the other billers currently on the platform include Bajaj Auto Finance, PMC Property Tax, and Delhi Jal Board.
The only missing element is the absence of prepaid mobile recharge option. Note that Google Tez supports National Payment Corporation of India’s (NPCI) Bharat Bill Payment System.
How does it work?
In the Payments section of the app, tap on ‘New’ (with the ₹ icon). It will lead you to the ‘Start a payment’ section, where you will see certain ‘Suggested Businesses’ and your a list of contacts from your phonebook who are on Tez. Here you will see the ‘Pay your bills’ option, under ‘Account Number’ (to pay via your bank account) and ‘UPI ID, QR, Phone’ (the other digital payment options). Tap on it to see the list of billers.
You need to enter your account information for the selected biller. For example, if you want to pay your electricity bill, enter the consumer ID provided by BEST Mumbai or CESC Kolkata. This information will be verified and post that you will be able to view billing details. To pay the outstanding bill, link your bank account, enter the 4-digit UPI Pin for that bank account, and payment processed.
Google Tez uses Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for payments, which is a protocol that allows the transfer of money from one bank account to another. Apart from allowing transfer of money from UPI ID to UPI ID, account number and QR code, Tez also allows payments by connecting devices using audio.
It had reported over 7.5 million users and 30 million transactions within five weeks of its launch. The transactions included P2P (person to person), cash mode and P2M (person to merchant) payments. Later it had reported 140 million transactions for the months of October 2017 and November 2017 since launch, apart from 12 million users.
Overall, between December 2017 and January 2018, UPI witnessed a 4% increase in the total transaction volumes. The number of transactions grew by 6.4 million in January 2018, whereas the total amount transacted increased by Rs 2,426.9 crores. In December 2017, volume had increased by 40.6 million and amount transacted had grown Rs 3,503.7 crores.
