One of the most popular instant messaging apps “WhatsApp” has now made it’s one of the most awaited features called “WhatsApp Pay” live in India. Although the feature was in testing and waiting for the NPCI approval (the governing body of payment service providers in India) back from 2018, it is now live for some users in India.
Why WhatsApp Pay is live for Select Million users in India?
From some users I mean, In India, WhatsApp has a user base of around 400 million users. However, the NPCI has given WhatsApp the permission to make its payment feature live to not more than 20 million users for now. NPCI enforces the restriction because right now UPI in India is not capable to handle such many users. Also, recently, NPCI has formed a new rule that enforces all the third party payment service provider apps to transact 30% of their total transaction via the Unified Payment Interface. This new rule is going to take effect from starting next year.
For now maybe WhatsApp Pay is available for select 20 million users in India, the company said to roll it out soon for all the 400 million users in talk with the governing body of the payment service provider in India i.e. the NPCI.
In a blog post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckersberg said, we have made making payments via WhatsApp pay as simple as sending a message. The feature works with 140 banks and In India, the company has partnered with 5 leading banks, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, and State Bank of India. To register to use WhatsApp Pay, a user must have a debit card and a bank account. Other users using any of the third party UPI apps (Some popular ones in India are Google Pay, PayTm, Phone Pe, and Amazon Pay) can also send money to the WhatsApp Pay users.
Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckersberg said, WhatsApp Pay is going to help in raising many of the MSME in India as it requires no fee to use it. In turn, this feature will also help to grow the Indian economy to some extent as the MSMEs in India right now are the backbones of the country. Facebook CEO also said, in terms of security we all know how secure this end-to-end encrypted messaging app is, hence, users should relax about the security of the feature.