NPCI stands for National Payments Corporation of India and this organisation has recently given affirmation to WhatsApp Inc. to bring their long-awaited Payment Services to India through Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
Facebook-owned WhatsApp Inc. waited two years to bring their WhatsApp Pay services to India and finally, the National Payments Corporation of India has given its permission. However, the market is already saturated with big players like Paytm, Google Pay and PhonePe.
There are many concerns, whether WhatsApp pay will be able to make a distinct standing amongst the already existing and efficient platforms via the UPI system with these large service providers dominating the market and the individual bank applications that allow direct payments through the UPPI system.
NPCI has recently introduced a 30% market share cap on UPI transactions starting from January next year. This decision was followed by the organisation’s nod to WhatsApp Payment Services going live via UPI systems.
WhatsApp Inc. has been instructed to go live on the UPI framework in a more or less, “graded manner” which means that WhatsApp shall roll out the feature in several phases.
Phase One might include 20 million people, as per NPCI, followed by another 20 million people in Phase Two and so on. The total WhatsApp user-base in India covers nearly 500 million users.
WhatsApp is currently running beta testing as a part of their initial operations for WhatsApp pay which is said to serve an approximate of 1 million users across India.
WhatsApp Inc. has faced a lot of challenges and pitfalls before permitted to go live. The first major issue that caused a considerable delay was because of new norms by the Reserve Bank of India on Data Localisation. The second one being WhatsApp Inc.’s run to the Supreme Court of India as a plea was filed in the court regarding the company’s pilot beta testing program to be run across the country with about one million people getting early beta version to WhatsApp Pay.
WhatsApp is certainly expanding its operations beyond its flagship messaging services in India and entering the Payments market run via UPI.
Last month, in October, news speculated that WhatsApp is entering the e-commerce industry as well with their payment services. This new service from WhatsApp will allow users to shop and pay using the popular messaging app.
According to reports, it has been confirmed that earlier in April, Mukesh Ambani owned Jio Mart was testing the WhatsApp backed online marketplace in India where the users will be able to buy and pay directly from within the messaging application.
WhatsApp Inc.’s parent company and social media giant, Facebook Inc. signed a deal with Mukesh Ambani’s Jio for an investment deal worth $5.7 billion.
