WhatsApp competes with Paytm, Google Pay, Walmart’s own PhonePe and Amazon Pay in India, the company’s largest market with over 400 million users.
WhatsApp announced that the rupee symbol has been added to its chat composer to make it easier for Indian users to exchange payments through the messaging app.
In addition, customers can now use the composer’s camera to scan any QR code to make payments in over 20 million stores across the country.
Manesh Mahatme, WhatsApp India Director Payments, said at the Global FinTech Festival (GFF) 2021 that the company believes true inclusion is when customers don’t have to navigate their phone to make a payment.
“An arrival point is when payments simply ‘fit’ into a customer’s intrinsic behavior. Hundreds of millions of customers send WhatsApp messages every day … we want sending money to be as easy and simple as sending a message, ”he added. Distribution of the rupee symbol (Rs) has started and will be available to users across India in the coming weeks.
WhatsApp began testing its UPI-based payment solution in India in 2018. While waiting for regulatory approval, testing was limited to approximately one million users.
WhatsApp announced last November that it would bring its payment services to India after gaining approval from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) had approved WhatsApp to launch its payment service in the country “tiered” with a maximum registered user base of 20 million in UPI.
When asked about the cap of 20 million, Mahatme said, “We are currently scaling up gradually and are working with NPCI to address this scale.”
“Our focus is currently on increasing awareness of our payments on WhatsApp and developing new use cases for transactions. We will focus on these inputs in the future, ”he added.
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