WhatsApp Pay has been available for about two years for over a million users, within an initial test phase in India. In the Asian country, the payment system was launched in beta during 2018, and in the course of its activity it has had to face several regulatory obstacles to obtaining final launch approval After two years and the various obstacles, however, WhatsApp has started the distribution of the payments functionality for all in India .

WhatsApp Pay is based on UPI ( Unified Payment Interface ), standard defined by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The company uses the same methods as other existing apps such as Google Pay and PhonePe, with WhatsApp Pay working with five different banks in the country at launch, including ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, the State Bank of India and Jio Payments. Bank. Using WhatsApp, users can send money to anyone who uses a UPI compatible app.

To talk about the news, the CEO of Facebook (parent company of WhatsApp), Mark Zuckerberg: “With the UPI standard India has created something truly special and is opening up a world of opportunities for micro and small businesses that are the backbone of the Indian economy. India is the first country to do something like this and I am delighted that we have been able to support this commitment and work together to help achieve a more digital India ” the NPCI has imposed a limit of 20 millions of users enabled for WhatsApp Pay. The reason is simple: to avoid the emergence of a monopoly in the digital payment system in the country, since with its 400 millions of active users in India WhatsApp could dominate the market. According to the Indian Authority WhatsApp Pay will be able to grow gradually , with the limit that will be extended over time.

According to the new directives of the NPCI, no third-party app, therefore not even Google Pay, will be able to process more than 30% of the monthly UPI transaction volume in India. Previously the market was dominated by Google Pay and PhonePe, which in October alone processed 1.6 billion transactions out of the 2 billion that occurred through the payment standard.