WhatsApp is now planning to reveal its much-awaited Whatsapp Pay Service in India. The company is reported to launch its new payment service in the country by May end.
As per the report revealed, Whatsapp will partner with three private banks for its payment service. The list includes the HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and Axis Bank. The report also highlights that SBI Bank will not go live in the first phase.
The reports highlight that the SBI Bank and Whatsapp Pay are working closely via the integration testing phase. Moreover, due to the compliance issues with the regulator, the bank is not giving live in the first phase.
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) recently revealed that it is mandatory for large digital platforms to offer UPI-based payment services with multiple banks to avoid any delay in transactions and to maintain a high success rate.
Furthermore, Google Pay and Truecaller are among the major platforms that allow transactions via multiple banks as of now. Moreover, Google Pay already has ICICI Bank, SBI Bank, HDFC Bank, and Axis Bank as its partners to enable the UPI-based payments.
With this, Whatsapp Pay could finally make its Indian presence. Facebook has faced various hurdles to introduce its payment solution in India. In the year 2018, Whatsapp collaborated with ICICI Bank to test its Whatsapp Pay feature with more than 1 million users.
Moreover, the Government of India has raised a couple of objections. The government has asked for the RBI’s views on whether payment solutions controlled remotely violate rules or not. The government started questioning Whatsapp over data localization policy.
With this, Whatsapp Pay will give a direct competition to the likes of the PhonePe, Paytm, Amazon Pay, Google Play, and more. This is mainly because Whatsapp as of now has more than 400 million users in India, and if all of them are converted into Whatsapp Pay Service, the company will establish its dominance in the UPI-based payment segment.
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