NEW DELHI : Facebook Inc’s WhatsApp will start its payments service in India on Friday, the messaging app said in a blog post, after it received approval from the country’s leading payments processor to roll out the much-delayed system.
WhatsApp, which counts India as its biggest market with more than 400 million users, had been running a peer-to-peer payments service with limited users for over two years, awaiting regulatory approvals.
“Payments is available now in 10 Indian regional language versions of WhatsApp,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a video statement.
“Starting today, people across India will be able to send money through WhatsApp. This secure payment experience makes transferring money just as easy as sending a message. People can safely send money to a family member or share the cost of goods from a distance without having to exchange cash in person or going to a local bank,” WhatsApp said in a blog post.
WhatsApp said it had partnered with five Indian banks, including State Bank of India and Jio Payments Bank, for the service.
“Payments (service) on WhatsApp is now available for people on the latest version of the iPhone and Android app… We”re excited to join India”s campaign to increase the ease and use of digital payments, which is helping expand financial inclusion in India,” it said adding that users will need to have a bank account and debit card in India to send money through the platform in India.
WhatsApp will initially begin scaling up the service with a maximum of 20 million users, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) said on Thursday.
All major payments players in India use the UPI framework, built by NPCI, for services such as peer-to-peer money transfer, utility payments, and phone recharges.
UPI processed over 2.07 billion transactions in October, up from over 1.8 billion the previous month, according to NPCI.
WhatsApp will compete with Alphabet Inc’s Google, Walmart’s PhonePe, and Alibaba-backed Paytm in India’s digital payments market, which is expected to more than double in size to $135 billion in 2023 from 2019 levels, according to PwC and the Indian industry lobby group ASSOCHAM.
Google had 67 million monthly active users in September last year, and on the merchant side, it had over three million active merchant’s data for June 2020. Google Pay has not shared any updated stats since September 2019.
Facebook earlier this year bought a 9.99% stake in Reliance’s digital unit for $5.7 billion, an investment that will give WhatsApp an inside track on payments for Reliance’s retail unit, which aims to serve tens of millions of small shops across India.(agencies)