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Tag: WhatsApp Pay

  • WhatsApp Pay goes live in India

    WhatsApp Pay goes live in India

    KOLKATA: In what could be a turnaround for India’s payments market, WhatsApp Pay has gone live today. WhatsApp’s parent company Facebook has been developing the payment feature for a while now, but regulatory hurdles were not easy to overcome.

    The WhatsApp payment feature has been designed in partnership with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) using the Unified Payment Interface (UPI). To carry out transactions via the messaging app in India, it’s necessary to have a bank account and debit card. WhatsApp sends instructions to banks that initiate the transfer of money via UPI between sender and receiver bank accounts. People can send money on WhatsApp to anyone using a UPI supported app.

    The Indian digital payments market is already saturated with homegrown platform Paytm, big players like Google Pay, PhonePe, Amazon Pay, as well as a dozen other start-ups. But an enormous growing user base of 400 million, and a market value projected to reach $1 trillion in the next three years inspires confidence of having more than a fighting chance among new entrants like WhatsApp. Plus, the messaging app already enjoys immense popularity in the country, which also happens to be its largest market.

     

     

    “In the long run, we believe the combination of WhatsApp and UPI’s unique architecture can help local organizations address some of the key challenges of our time, including increasing rural participation in the digital economy and delivering financial services to those who have never had access before,” the company stated in a blog post.

    Just like every feature in WhatsApp, payments is designed with a strong set of security and privacy principles, including entering a personal UPI PIN for each payment, the app’s developers added. Payments on WhatsApp is now available for people on the latest version of the iPhone and Android app.

  • India leads Facebook daily active user growth

    India leads Facebook daily active user growth

    MUMBAI: India has fuelled the social media giant Facebook’s daily active user growth which increased by 9 per cent to 1.62 billion in the quarter ending September.

    “Daily active users reached 1.62 billion, up 9 per cent  compared to last year, led by growth in India, Indonesia, and the Philippines. This represents approximately 66 per cent of the 2.45 billion monthly active users in September," Facebook chief financial officer David Wehner said.

    Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also added on an optimistic note that the social media giant will soon be able to fully launch WhatsApp Pay in India.

    “We’re working on payments in WhatsApp. We have our tests going on in India. We’re very optimistic that we are going to be able to launch to everyone in India soon," he said.

    Facebook beat analysts estimation in the quarter in sales and witnessed steady user growth reporting $6.09 billion net income and reaching 2.45 billion monthly average users.