Govt of India has finally approved Whatsapp Pay in India. It will be purely UPI based, and the approval has been granted only after Whatsapp assured Govt that the data will be saved locally. An unnamed NPCI official said, “The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)
has granted WhatsApp permission to operate its digital payment service in a phased manner,”
has granted WhatsApp permission to operate its digital payment service in a phased manner,”
However, the roll out of Whatsapp Pay will be done in a gradual, phased manner, as per the reports coming in.
In the first phase, 1 crore Whatsapp users will be allowed to access the UPI-based payment mechanism on Whatsapp, and then gradually, the services will be rolled out to all other users.
Infact, Govt had already allowed Whatsapp to test Whatsapp Pay last year, when they had partnered with ICICI Bank for the backend processes.
However, due to the data localization laws being opposed by Whatsapp, commercial rollout was not allowed.
Since 90% of the UPI market is right now controlled by Paytm, PhonePe and Google Pay, Whatsapp’s entry into this market makes things very interesting.
