Google rebrands Tez to Google Pay in India

Google has renamed its UPI payment app in India from Google Tez to Google Pay. While this does bring it under Google's recently consolidated payment services, Google Pay in India will continue to use the UPI protocol instead of the NFC-based system used in other countries.

Apart from the name change, Google also announced that Google Pay in India will soon allow users to request an instant, pre-approved bank loan directly from within the app. Customers will be able to request a loan from Federal Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and Kotak Mahindra Bank. Users will be able to choose the amount and the period over which it will be paid back and the amount will be deposited directly without any paperwork.

The bank loan feature will be rolling out in the next few weeks. Users will be informed with a notification when the feature is available to them.

Google is also working on integrating Google Pay in India with various service providers. Current list of partners include Dish TV, redBus, Mi.com, Goibibo, FreshMenu, BookMyShow, Jet Airways, Nykaa, Reliance, Croma, FoodPanda, and Zerodha.

Google Pay, née Tez currently has 22 million active users, with 750 million transactions being made so far since the service launched in September of 2017. The service uses India's UPI, or Unified Payments Interface, which enables direct money transfer from the sender's bank account to the receiver's with the UPI app acting as a bridge. The service is free of charge and only requires the sender's and receiver's banks to support UPI and the users to have created a UPI ID. UPI is currently the fastest growing payments systems in India.