Google introduces chat feature in its Tez app

Google has launched its Tez person-to-person payments app last year and now it is adding a chat feature to it. As per latest reports, the feature is being rolled out and lets users send messages related to each transaction.

The feature will apparently be helpful for tracking the context of payments and so on.

It may be yet another messaging solution from Google, and comes at a time when WhatsApp has just launched its own in-app payments system for India. The WhatsApp payment system is seen to have a big potential and be a huge deal since the messaging service has over 200 million Indian users, representing the majority of smartphone owners in the country. Paytm, India's largest mobile payments company, also has more than 200 million users, and added a similar chat option late last year.

Both Google and WhatsApp have built their services atop the Indian government’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system for transferring money by tapping into bank accounts directly rather than maintaining a virtual wallet. While one company is adding payments to a chat app, the other is now adding chat to a payments app.

Tags: Google chat feature, Tez app, google tez app, Unified Payments Interface, upi, chat app, payments app, varindia