By Shweta Arya
WhatsApp has over 200 million active monthly users in India. The platform is now leveraging this massive reach by the launch of its own digital payment service exclusively for India.
WhatsApp has over 200 million active monthly users in India. The platform is now leveraging this massive reach by the launch of its own digital payment service exclusively for India.
WhatsApp has only launched the beta version of the payments
feature for now. The WhatsApp Pay feature is only available in India and the
transactions will be done via Unified Payments Interface (UPI). UPI is a
payment method where the user will have to link their bank account and have a
separate UPI PIN to generate the transaction.
The
entry of big players like WhatsApp and Google at this juncture could mean the
end of the road for smaller, struggling firms.
While WhatsApp Pay seems to make life easier, the only drawback
is that it is not compatible for making payments to e-commerce marketplaces
such as Flipkart, Amazon, etc. The feature is also not exclusively for making
payments to shopkeepers or brick and mortar stores until and unless the
shopkeeper is in your contacts. Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma has also
demanded a level-playing field for all UPI-based apps. WhatsApp has
custom-implemented Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system which is not secure
and flouts norms laid out by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)
that has developed the UPI system.
If WhatsApp implements an effective strategy, it has the
potential to become as big as WeChat, China’s largest messaging application
with over 960 million monthly active users. It isn’t just about the number of
users, but also in terms of engagement levels, WhatsApp scores way higher than
other apps. Therefore, theoretically it will be easier for it to engage
customers who are looking at making peer-to-peer payments.
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