Tez worked on the vast majority of India's smartphones (with apps for both Android and iOS) with the Android app supporting English, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, and Telugu.[1] There were plans to release the app in other emerging countries including Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand.[5] "Tez" is the Hindi word for "Fast". Within 37 days after being launched, Tez got about 8.5 million installations. Over 30 million transactions were made on the app as of 27 October 2017.
The application did not require users to share any personal information such as mobile numbers or usernames like other payment applications. Instead, it used audio QR codes[5] that relied on sound transmitted at a frequency inaudible to the human ear from the payee handset to the merchant handset. This technology does away with the need for NFC chips on the handsets, which gave it an advantage since a significant number of smartphones in India and other developing markets do not have NFC chips embedded. This was indeed a technology ahead of its time.[promotion?][1]
