Facebook picked 2019 as the year its mobile Whatsapp payments will rollout globally. To this promise, it has chosen London as its hub to lead its global mobile payments efforts on the app, partly because London tends to attract talent from where Whatsapp is already popular and it doubles as a leading hub in fin-tech.
Last year Whatsapp tested a similar service in India where one could draw from their bank account and then send directly to the recipient’s account. Whether this is the approach that will be taken by the London hub remains to be answered.
Facebook purchased Whatsapp for close to $19B but has struggled to monetize the service, given it leans towards privacy and doesn’t serve adverts, which is Facebook’s cash cow at the moment. The other options left on the table are Whatsapp for Business, that helps businesses reach out to their customers and now Whatsapp payments will join the fold.
Whatsapp will be hiring 100 engineers from London and Dublin to oversee payments integrated into the app.
