Now, riders can pay for their Uber trips using Google Pay

San Francisco-based cab hailing major Uber’s India operations has now onboarded Google Pay (earlier known as Tez) as one of its payment options.

In a statement, Google said that users can also earn an assured cashback of upto Rs 1,000 when the Google Pay option is used as a payment option for 10 Uber rides.

The development comes a month after Google rebranded its UPI-based Tez payment app to Google Pay as part of an effort to consolidate its payment business in India.

Earlier, in January this year, Pali Bhat, Google’s global head for payments products, said that the company was merging Google Wallet and Android Pay under Google Pay.

Caesar Sengupta, vice president of Google's Next Billion Users initiative and payments, had recently said that the app was downloaded 55 million times and has an active monthly user base of 22 million. The app has so far helped carry out 750 million transactions with an annual run rate of $30 billion in terms of transaction value, he added.

Last year, Tez had claimed to have acquired 12 million active users in just 10 weeks of its launch, processing more than 140 million transactions. This means that the payments app has recorded more than five-fold growth in the number of transactions and over 80% growth in user base since then.

Google Pay is the latest entrant in India's increasingly hot payments space and competes with local players Paytm and Mobikwik. Other global firms such as Facebook’s WhatsApp, which has already launched a pilot in the country, and Apple have also been eyeing the India payments space. 

However, a recent directive by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) requiring all companies to store payments-related data within the country has thrown a spanner in their plans. 

Following this, Apple and WhatsApp are believed to have put their plans on hold.

For Uber users, this is just another payment option along with Paytm, credit card, debit card, UPI, Jio Money and cash. Recently, Uber also introduced Uber Gift Card, its native digital gifting ecosystem as another payment option on its platform. Uber gift card, which has been rolled out in collaboration with Qwikcilver, can be redeemed and used across the cab hailing and Uber Eats platforms.