(Image source from: livemint.com)
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has granted permission to the Facebook to launch WhatsApp Pay app in India. This will provide the messaging app to increase its payment services using the UPI scheme of the government.
The messaging app that has been backed by Facebook has announced that WhatsApp Pay would be offered to the one million users in India but it couldn’t launch the app formally as the approval by the National Payments Corporation of India has been delayed.
It has been said that the WhatsApp Pay app would be made available to around 10 million people in the first roll out through the messaging app. After launching the WhatsApp Pay app successfully, it is likely to become one of the largest mobile payments apps that are available in India. It has been noted that the messaging app has more than 450 million users in India.
Mark Zuckerberg who is the Chief Executive Officer of Facebook has earlier revealed that the WhatsApp Pay would be launched in several other countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia among various other countries.
The WhatsApp Pay has been delayed by the National Payments Corporation of India because of the issues regarding the data compliance which needs to be addressed by its parent company Facebook. Few features that were present in the WhatsApp Pay have led to the Reserve Bank of India and the Government of India to delay the granting of permission for WhatsApp Pay to be rolled out in India.
Currently there exists several other apps for the payment and transferring of money in India which include GooglePay app of Google, Paytm which is backed by Ali Baba, Phone Pe, Mobiwik as few among several other apps. It can be noticed that the launching of WhatsApp Pay in India may lead to a tough competition among the several other apps that are already in the existence in India for the payments and transferring money.
Google Pay is the most used app for payments and transfer of money in India which is then followed by Paytm.
By Shrithika Kushangi
