CHENNAI:
WhatsApp has received approval to roll out its payments service in India starting with 20 million users, the country’s flagship payments processor said on Thursday, giving the Facebook-owned app an entry into a crowded digital payments space.
No fee will be charged when sending money via WhatsApp, said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday (local time) following the nod by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for WhatsApp to go live on UPI in the multi-bank model.
Speaking through a video statement, Zuckerberg said that it will be supported by more than 140 banks.
"Now you can send money to your friends and family through WhatsApp as easily as sending a message. There's no fee, and it's supported by more than 140 banks. And because it's WhatsApp, it's secure and private too," he said.
He further said that the payments will be available in 10 Indian regional language versions of WhatsApp. "All you need is a debit card with a bank that supports UPI and you can set it up straight away. You can find it in the latest version of WhatsApp," he said.
"We've been working on this with the National Payments Corporation of India, who oversee everything to make sure it's secure and reliable. And we've built it using India's Unified Payments Interface, which makes it easy for anyone to instantly accept payments across different apps — and for companies to provide people with great services," he added.
"When people can access financial tools, they're more empowered to support themselves and others, or start a business. Long term, we need more innovation that gives people control over their money, and making payments easier is a small step that can really help," he said while adding that India is the first country to do anything like this.
WhatsApp, which has over 400 million users in India, its biggest market, will compete with Alphabet Inc’s Google Pay, Softbank- and Alibaba-backed Paytm and Walmart’s PhonePe.
The Menlo Park, California-based firm had for long been trying to comply with Indian regulations, including data storage norms that require all payments-related data to be stored locally.
“WhatsApp can expand its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) user base in a graded manner starting with a maximum registered user base of 20 million,” the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) said in a statement.
Currently, third party applications such as PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm, and Amazon Pay, dominate the UPI ecosystem, controlling majority of the transactions.
According to industry estimates, the biggest player is Google Pay with over a 40 per cent market share, closely followed by PhonePe.UPI recorded over two billion transactions in October, a milestone that highlights the faster adoption of digital payments in a post-Covid-19 world.
Online transactions, lending and e-wallet services have been growing rapidly in India, led by a government push to make the country’s cash-loving merchants and consumers adopt digital payments.
UPI processed over 1.8 billion transactions in September, up from over 1.6 billion the previous month, according to data on the NPCI website.
Launched in 2016, UPI had crossed 1 billion transactions for the first time in October 2019. While it took UPI three years to reach a billion transactions in a month, the next billion came in just a year.
Set up in 2008, the NPCI is a not-for-profit company which counts over 50 banks as its shareholders, including the State Bank of India, Citibank and HSBC.