WhatsApp Joins P2P Mobile Payments Race in India

Photo: Reuters

WhatsApp, which has more than a billion users a day, ‎has become the latest ‎company to dive into the fast-growing digital payments market in India, ‎having introduced payments to its messaging app to let users transfer money ‎to one another with a text. ‎

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A beta version of WhatsApp’s update reveals the service in India, where the ‎messaging app recruits local payment app experts, which was ‎discovered by the blog WABetaInfo.‎

💰WhatsApp Payments screenshots for the setup — thanks @nagenderraos pic.twitter.com/oqPiIMWnra
— WABetaInfo (@WABetaInfo) February 8, 2018

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The new the beta feature, which is set to give around 200 million users the ‎ability to transfer money through the popular app, is only available to the ‎mobile version of the application and not on WhatsApp Web. ‎

The payment interface is based on UPI services, a peer-to-peer mobile ‎transactions‎ system run by the Reserve Bank of India. The service allows ‎money transfers between any two bank accounts with registered mobile ‎numbers, and the list includes India’s major banks such as HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, State Bank ‎of India.‎

The Facebook-owned messaging app has rolled out the payment feature in the same area where users can share a photo, video, file, ‎contact or location into your chat session.‎

The new product is aimed at the rapidly growing digital payment market in ‎India, which is expected to touch $500 billion by 2020. Alibaba-‎backed Paytm currently dominates the burgeoning ecosystem with a nearly 60 percent market share.

The market is also crowded with several mobile ‎wallet players that are working to grab a slice of ‎India’s growing mobile wallet pie. ‎The list includes global companies like Truecaller, Uber, Hike Messenger, MobiKwik, ‎FreeCharge, Oxigen, Citrus Pay, Phone Pe, PayU, ItzCash, Jio Money, and Ola ‎Money. ‎

However, WhatsApp support for payments is highly anticipated because of the ‎app’s huge popularity among Indian users, where the country is its largest market with ‎over 200 million active daily users. ‎