In a major development, WhatsApp will be able to roll out its digital payment platform, WhatsApp Pay, across India after securing a key regulatory approval on Thursday.
“The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has granted WhatsApp a licence to operate its digital payment service in a phased manner,” a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive told Business Standard on Friday. The official didn’t want to be quoted.
The NPCI’s approval came days after the RBI’s go-ahead. WhatsApp has assured the regulators that it will comply with the data localisation norms – a key factor behind the delay of the WhatsApp’s payment service launch.
In the first phase, WhatsApp will be able to offer payment services to 10 million users in India. “Pending other compliance points, the messaging platform will be able to do a full rollout,” the source said.
Once the company is able to do a full rollout, it will possibly be one of the biggest payments players in the country, given that the messaging service giant counts India as its biggest market with over 400 million users.
Payments through WhatsApp were introduced to a million users as a part of trial run in February 2018. WhatsApp started its trial run by partnering with ICICI Bank. However, the company was awaiting regulatory nod to go live. The service is based on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) standard, which has been developed by the NPCI.
The move would put the Menlo Park, California-based social media giant in direct competition with players like Alphabet’s Google Pay, Walmart-owned PhonePe, Amazon Pay and Alibaba-backed Paytm. These companies are already locked in a fierce battle to dominate the digital payments space in India.
Last week, parent company Facebook’s chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg said at the company’s earnings call that it expects to launch WhatsApp Pay in a number of countries in the next six months.
“We got approval to test this (payment services) with one million people in India back in 2018. And when so many of the people kept using it week after week, we knew it was going to be big when we get to launch,” Zuckerberg had said.
In 2019, the RBI had asked the NPCI to ensure that WhatsApp Pay is fully compliant with data localisation norms before it gets permission to roll out its services across the country.
Source: BS
Image Courtesy: Paymnts
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