WhatsApp has had tough luck with its payment service in markets where it has announced the feature. Back in June, the service got suspended in Brazil just days after it announced rollout. Things are now looking up for the Facebook-owned messaging platform as it has now gotten permission for a wider roll-out in India after nearly two years in beta.
Back in early 2018, WhatsApp announced that users will be able to send money within chats between themselves using India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI). However, the feature was only available to 1 million beta testers.
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) announced earlier today that it has granted WhatsApp permission to roll-out the service albeit with some conditions.
WhatsApp will have to roll-out the service in a “graded manner”, starting with just 20 million users. That sure is a small number considering the messaging service has more than 400 million users in India. Nevertheless, 20 million is better than 1 million. NPCI also says that WhatsApp has to work with multiple banking partners.
The gradual roll-out and 20 million user cap are most likely linked to NPCI’s other announcement today which says that no third-party app should process more than 30% of all UPI transactions done in a month. TechCrunch reports that the Indian body took the decision to “protect the UPI ecosystem”.
This new condition is said to affect other players in the payment business such as Google (Google Pay) and Walmart (PhonePe) who processed more than 38% and 40% respectively of UPI payments last month. The rule doesn’t go into effect until January 2021 but there are already questions arising on how these services will handle the situation. Will they put a limit on payments users can carry out in a month?
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