Hi Folks,
Diwali
greetings to you, hope you are in a full festival mood.
To add to
this festival mood, I decided to write a blog after a long-time interval &
chose a brand new UPI payment app. As we utilize different money transfers
channels during this festivals learning about this out of box accessible app
will be of great help.
On 18th
of September global search giant Google launched an UPI based payment app named
“Tez” exclusively for Indian market. This initiative is part of Google’s
localization programmed under which they are coming with lot of products for
big Indian market. So let’s discuss
features of this Tez.
What is
Tez?
“Tez” a
Hindi work means fast or quick in English. It is nothing but we can say a
fastest in operation payment app made available on both [Android/IOs] platforms.
I have personally tested the Android version on my Moto g5+ using talkback. I
am so amazed with its speedy performance that from the day one it has become my
primary transaction app. I am a regular user of e-wallets. I also use official
UPI app of banks however with Tez, I experienced seamless financial transactions
with accessible &user-friendly interface.
What is
UPI?
Those you
don’t know, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is an instant payment system
developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), RBI regulated
entity. UPI is built over the IMPS infrastructure and allows you to instantly
transfer money between any two parties' bank accounts.
Tez
installation & configuration.
You can
install this app directly from play store or from a referral link.
After
installing this app in just 3 simple steps it gets configured.
On first
step we can select desired language for app’s interface, since it is targeted
to Indian market Google currently supports more than 4 regional Indian
languages including Marathi, Tamil, Telgu, Bengali & Gujarati. Yes it also supports
English& Hindi. All talkback users before
selecting any regional language please
make sure to have required synthesizer
voice installed on your device.
On second step
I have been asked to select security mode from 3 options, security pattern of
device or finger print or new google pin.
in first 2
options app is secured with your device’s local hardware & in last option
you are suppose to generate a google pin using your google id, please note,
this google pin is being stored on Google’s cloud servers.
Definitely I
took the less time-consuming option of finger print of my device & Tez
accepted my finger prints in less than seconds. Now no one can open Tez on my
device without my finger print, isn’t that great?
Now in final
step I added my bank account to Tez using debit card. This step is also very
simple, first you have to confirm your mobile number, once your device is verified
through OTP it will list your all bank accounts, of course only if your bank
supports UPI.
After
selecting desired bank account, it will ask for your debit card details like
number & expiry date, this data is important to authenticate the correct
user
Once above
steps are complete it creates your Tez profile & generates one VPA [virtual
private address] based on your google id, this is handy whenever you want to
transfer money using VPA mode.
Now in final
step it will ask you to set UPI pin for this VPA, please note every bank has
different length for pin, surely between 4 to 6 digits, better you confirm this
with your bank
Hurray! That’s
it; I am all set for my first Tez transaction.
First
transaction using Tez
When you
open Tez on your phone you will find a neat & clean user interface, really
a big kudos to Google’s developer/designer team as this complete interface is
highly accessible with talkback.
Using talkback,
you can read/execute all options including app menus & settings.
On main
screen you have your profile image along with your full name, once tap on this
we can enter into profile configurations.
If you swipe
through all items you will see options like “Cache mode”, “New”, “Rewards”
& “Offers”. These options are really straight forward, no technical
expertise required.
For making
my first Tez transaction I tapped on “New”, this opened a start payment screen
& listed all available transaction modes including Tez number, VPA &
banks IFSC code.
Tez number
is very handy option if you want to transfer money to someone who is on same
platform, in fact if anyone in your contacts is using Tez then those will be
listed here, don’t you think it is really cool?
I saw couple
of my contacts in this list & got to know that I am little late in party.
I tapped on
one of my contact for transaction & quickly Tez opened a next screen which
had a chat history type list, definatly it was empty as it was my first
transaction with this contact.
There were 2
more buttons for “Pay” & “Request”, again very simple, no confusing
financial terms.
I tapped on
“Pay” & there is a payment screen which has 2 inputs, amount & “What’s
this for – description”. As we all know we can provide short description for
all our payments using latter option.
All talkback
users, please wait, if your using navigational gestures then you may get
confuse as amount input has a fixed virtual keyboard. In simple words you don’t
have to double tap on amount input to fire up digit keyboard as it is already
opened on a screen as a part of interface.
Using normal
navigation or explore by touch we can enter desired value & find “next”
button. I entered the value & tapped on “next” button this time focus went
to description input & virtual letter keyboard popped up on screen. I
quickly typed description & started my normal navigational gesture&
observed one additional button “proceed to pay”, aaha I got it. Without
spending extra time, I activated same button & got prompt from talkback
saying that “waiting for your bank”.
In few
seconds got prompt “Welcome to NPCI payment”, on this screen you will have to
key in your UPI pin which you have configured while adding this bank account.
Again,
talkback users, hold on, this is not a Tez interface, now you are completely in
NPCI’s payment gateway screen, here again they have used fixed virtual digit
keyboard hence no need to activate pin input. Using the fixed keyboard enter
your pin but don’t search for “next” button. Confused? Don’t worry, same issue
with all other apps this button is not labeled on this keyboard hence talkback
will just say button at 2 instances, in normal navigation first unlabeled
button is “Clear” &unlabeled button
after 0 is a “next” or “proceed” option. So just hit on this & wait for a
message from gateway.
Awesome, I
got transaction successful message & focus returned back to Tez contact
screen, on this screen now there is a list item which gives detail about this
transaction.
This is
really great; you won’t believe I did this transaction in less than 2 mins
using talkback.
Sometime you
get message saying that “waiting with bank” & focus returns to Tez screen
& you can see this in your transaction list as a pending one.
In all
transfer modes, whether VPA, IFSC, & Tez user final step of UPI pin is same
as it is a security shield given to UPI transactions from NPCI.
Now on my
main screen I can see name of the persons with whom I did my recent
transactions, this is really handy if you quickly want to see your latest
transactions.
Promotional
rewards
Presently
Tez is having many promotional offers; one of the offers gives you a scratch voucher
on every transaction above rs. 50. with
unique payee. There is referral offer which will earn you 51 rupees when someone will install Tez from your
referral link & completes his/her first transaction, this will also give
them same amount as reward, so no need to force your friends as this will give
them small ice-cream or donut. Great
thing about these promotions is they give rewards directly into your connected
bank account. You can see all your earned rewards under “Rewards” on main
screen. Only one small issue with all these scratch vouchers is they open up
the result after swiping backword & forward, in short the way we scratch
paper vouchers however this gesture does not work always with talkback hence
you may have to turn off talkback for scratching these vouchers, I already
reported this issue to Google however if you will find any alternative then do
let me know.
all on going promotional offers are listed under “Offer” option. I know many of my
friends earned more than 1000 as rewards from various offers.
Advantages
of Tez
· Easy configuration.
· Highly accessible & usable design.
· Simple & intuitive interface.
· Multiple level of security mechanism.
· Transaction response is really fast
like its name.
· Directly linked with bank account,
thanks to UPI based design.
· Promotional rewards coming straight
to bank account.
Final
verdict
After trying
almost 3-4 wallets/UPI apps Tez is my stop over. Overall Tez is an amazingly
accessible & usable experience, after all offered by accessibility friendly
company Google. You can install this amazing app using below referral link, let
me earn some money please!
Check out
Tez, a simple and secure payments app by Google. Make your first payment and we
both get ₹51! https://g.co/tez/cC506