The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has allowed WhatsApp (WhatsApp) to go live on UPI. According to the press release on NPCI’s website, WhatsApp can expand its UPI user base in a phased manner, starting with a registered user base of up to 20 million in UPI.
Currently, Paytm, Google Pay and Phone Pay are the major players in the digital payment market.
Let us know that WhatsApp has been trying to launch its payment service for a long time because it wants to come in the digital payment market in India. In July last year, its global head Will Cathcart came to India with some senior officials. He had come to meet RBI, NPCI and officials of the Ministry of Electronics and IT and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. In conversation with the media, Cathcart said that the company intends to launch the payments service this year (in 2019).
India is an important market for WhatsApp. Out of the total of 1.5 billion users of the platform in the world, 400 million belong to India. Currently, there are more than 45 third party apps offering UPI based payments services including Google Pay, Amazon Pay, Flipkart and PhonePe. Apart from this 140 banks like Paytm Payments Bank, Airtel Payments Bank and Axis Bank also provide these services.
