Whatsapp is huge not just here but in India too, having over 200 million active users in that country alone, ranking it as one where the green messenger is used the most in the whole world. As fate would have it, India recently banned large banknotes from circulation in abid to fight corruption prompting a digital payments revolution in the country as millions had to get rid of these notes to conform to the government directive.
These millions had to convert/store their banknotes at legally accepted exchange points like banks, mobile wallets etc leading to an uptake in digital payments. As such, a slew of messaging apps in the country already have payments integrated into their services but Whatsapp too, is said to be making a foray into person to person (P2P) payments akin to mobile money by testing this feature in Whatsapp beta in India according to Techcrunch.
Whatsapp will use India’s own Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to allow funds move directly from the sender’s bank account to the recipient’s bank account. A host of Banks Indian banks already support this real-time payments system which is also regulated by India’s version of the central bank, called the Reserve Bank of India.
The difference here is while mobile money withdraws funds from one’s mobile wallet whose float is stored on an account maintained by the facilitator lets say MTN, UPI skips that process all together and withdraws funds directly from sender’s bank account to the recipient’s.
The payments feature is only available to beta testers in India. To configure it in order for payments to go live, verification is required via SMS and thereafter, one chooses his/her bank.
After this process, the payment option appears in Whatsapp’s interface, the same area where you attach/send photos,videos, documents, location etc.
I got yesterday pic.twitter.com/oiQlNRQbBX
— Nagender Rao Savanth (@nagenderraos) February 8, 2018
Features like these first make their way into Whatsapp Beta, just like the video calling feature we recently reported about before finally finding their way into the consumer version of the app. However with digital payments making headwinds against the traditional system in India, it makes sense as to why this feature will be launched there first.
