Andy Mukherjee, Columnist

What's Up, WhatsApp? Google's Beating Plastic

Digital payments are replacing cards, which are too expensive for low-margin merchants.

December 17, 2017 at 10:00 PM UTC

Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services in Asia. Previously, he worked for Reuters, the Straits Times and Bloomberg News.

1513328395_GettyImages-645131704 — Photographer: Punit Paranjpe/Getty Images

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai can count the early success of Tez, the online payment system he custom-built for India, as a promising start to a grueling fight.

The first click in online shopping is shifting away from search engines like Alphabet Inc.'s Google to e-commerce behemoth Amazon.com Inc. But Google isn't bowing out. Even with more product searches beginning within the Amazon app, Pichai can always help provide the last mile in commerce -- payment.