WhatsApp Pay plans significant investments in next 6 months
WhatsApp India on Tuesday said that over the next six months, it will make notable investments regarding digital payments on its platform across the country.
This will ensure accelerated growth of WhatsApp in a market where the adoption of unified payments interface (UPI) based payments has exploded.
In the last several weeks, WhatsApp introduced India-specific features on WhatsApp Pay, including adding ₹ (rupee) symbol in its chat composer for sending payments, and the camera icon in composer, which allows users to scan any QR (quick response) code.
According to Manesh Mahatme, Director-Payments, WhatsApp India, as the adoption of ‘payments on WhatsApp’ increases with users across the country, the company looks forward to working with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to further expand it to all users.
“We thank the NPCI for the increase in our cap to 40 million (from an initial cap of 20 million). Since our initial approval from NPCI, we have been working to deliver a simple, reliable, and secure experience for WhatsApp users that we hope will accelerate the adoption of UPI for the “next five hundred million” Indians,” Mahatme said in a statement.
This move comes after the NPCI approved increasing the user cap for WhatsApp’s payment service from the current 20 million to 40 million users.
According to Mahatme, the Meta-owned company has introduced several India-specific features in payments on WhatsApp over the last few weeks and has seen exciting results.
“Over the next six months, we have planned significant investments in payments on WhatsApp across India — including many more “India-first” features — that we are sure will accelerate our growth,” he informed.
There is an opportunity, he said, for UPI to have an even greater impact on the country — especially in rural regions where digital and financial inclusion can significantly improve people’s lives.
“We believe that WhatsApp Pay can be a key partner to the NPCI and RBI as we all aim to scale adoption of UPI and financial inclusion to those most in need,” the top company executive noted.
In September, the NPCI recorded digital payments worth Rs.6.54 lakh crore via 3.65 billion UPI transactions.
According to the latest data released by the NPCI in the month of October for the first time, India saw a whopping Rs.7.7 lakh crore (over $100 billion by value) digital transactions via UPI.
In the month of October that saw record festive shopping across e-commerce platforms, digital payments witnessed 4.2 billion UPI transactions in total.
Currently, PhonePe is the leader in the digital payments space in the country. PhonePe registered digital transactions worth Rs.3.06 lakh crore.
PhonePe currently has over 325 million registered users. The platform is also accepted at over 22 million merchant outlets across India.
[With Inputs from IANS]
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