Published 13:46 IST, May 6th 2020
WhatsApp Pay going to hit Indian market by end of May | Know details
WhatsApp Pay is finally going to be launched in the Indian market. Read more to find out the launch date and the reason why Facebook had to wait for 2 years.
Facebook is going to launch payment mode in WhatsApp called WhatsApp Pay soon in India. Facebook Inc has been struggling to launch this model in India for two years after the beta version of WhatsApp Pay rolled out in February 2018. However, the organisation has gotten a nod from the NCPI to enter in the Indian UPI market now.
When is WhatsApp Pay launching in the Indian market?
According to reports, the new payments feature in the messaging app called WhatsApp Pay will be available by the end of May 2020 in India. The Facebook-owned messenger application is reportedly launching its payments option in partnership with three private banks including ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and HDFC Bank in India. The reports also say that the State Bank of India (SBI) will be a part of the WhatsApp Pay later after the app is launched in the market. These four selected banks were affiliated in the Beta process of WhatsApp Pay as well in 2018.
While talking to a leading news portal, a WhatsApp spokesperson said that the organisation is continuously working with the government to provide the users with a payments mode on WhatsApp. WhatsApp currently has more than 400 million users in India and this new feature may boost the digital payments and help create a safer and easy way to transact in the country.
The delay in the launch of WhatsApp Pay is due to multiple legal and regulatory hurdles faced by Facebook to get testing clearance from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The reports revealed that the major problem faced by the organisation to launch WhatsApp Pay was the issue of the data localisation guidelines released by the Reserve Bank of India in April 2018.
The Facebook-owned messenger app is expected to give a tough competition to Google Pay, Paytm, Amazon Pay, and other UPI based apps in the market as it has more than 400 million users in India and more than 2 billion users worldwide. This also means that WhatsApp Pay may become one of the most used UPI based application in India as WhatsApp is widely used by many users in the country daily.
Apart from this, Facebook Inc recently bought a 9.9% stake in Reliance Jio. The partnership between Facebook and Jio is considered to be a boon for the Indian economy by many experts. This new Facebook-Jio collaboration may affect many telecom giants in the country such as Airtel, Vodafone and others.
Also Read | WhatsApp doubles group call limit to 8 people as demand spikes amid coronavirus lockdown
Updated 13:47 IST, May 6th 2020