WhatsApp Pay gets government approval, may launch soon!!!

According to a media report, WhatsApp Pay, which has so far been available to India users under one pilot, has been licensed by the National Payments Corporation of India - NPCI. The new development will allow WhatsApp to grow its payment service, using the government's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to enable mobile transactions. As part of the beta test, Facebook-owned company said it would offer WhatsApp Pay to one million users in India in 2018. However, due to delay in regulatory approval, service in the country could not be formally launched.


The Business Standard reports that the first phase of the WhatsApp Pay rollout will bring payment service through India's instant messaging process to 10 million users. The service is said to have received a license from NPCI on Thursday, the first of long-standing regulatory approvals that sought to officially launch WhatsApp Pay in the country of WhatsApp.

"The other compliance points are pending, so the messaging platform can do the full launch," said someone familiar with the development, as quoted in the English daily.

Given the fact that WhatsApp already has over 400 million users in the country, the full launch is one of India's largest mobile payment services.

Gadgets have come up with the clarity of accessing the 360 ​​WhatsApp and will update this space when the company responds.

WhatsApp began testing its payment service in February 2018 with a test. Since then, the instant messaging processor has provided its users with a "Payment" option to make UPI-based payments through IPICI Bank.

In an earnings call last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts that WhatsApp Pay will launch in several countries over the next six months. The executive also pointed to the immediate introduction of WhatsApp Pay in India last year. Moreover, along with India, Facebook aims to bring its paid service through WhatsApp in other emerging markets, including Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico.

One of the main reasons behind the delay in the introduction of WhatsApp Pay in India is the number of data compliance issues that Facebook has to look out for. The Government of India and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have expressed their concern over some aspects of WhatsApp. Cyber ​​experts across the country view WhatsApp Pay as a threat to the Indian digital banking ecosystem - especially when looking at the latest vulnerabilities found in the news processor.

WhatsApp Pay will provide fierce competition for sites like Amazon Pay, Google Pay and Alibaba-backed Paytm. And, in a country that reached 1.3 billion in December, it would increase transactions based on the UPI, with a year-over-year (YOY) growth of 111%.

In a report released by KPMG in August last year, it said digital payments in India were growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.7 per cent on non-cash transactions. A separate report by online payment gateway RazorPay highlights that India has seen a 383 per cent growth in digital payments from fiscal year 2018 to fiscal year 2019.

All this shows the remarkable growth potential of WhatsApp Pay in India. However, it is not clear how Facebook is pushing regulators in the country to address ongoing data compliance issues.