According to a news report, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has given Meta-owned WhatsApp permission to add 6 crore users to its payments service.
The NPCI’s action will enable WhatsApp to increase the number of users to whom it can offer the universal payment interface (UPI-based) feature to 10 crore.
The NPCI said in a news release, “With this approval, WhatsApp will be able to expand the service to its 10 crore users.”
The NPCI granted WhatsApp permission to go live on UPI in the multi-bank format in November 2020, enabling 2 crore users to begin with. The figure was later updated and increased to 4 crore in 2021.
The NPCI let WhatsApp to go live on UPI in stages because it did not want the messaging service to dominate the UPI market.
According to the news article, Manesh Mahatme, WhatsApp India’s director-payments, said his business would cooperate with the NPCI to expand its user base after the threshold was raised to 4 crore users. WhatsApp’s platform in India has more than 48.7 crore users.
The messaging app has not been able to carve out a niche for itself in the congested area of third-party app providers (TPAPs). It handled 25.4 lakh transactions for Rs 239.78 crore in March, while UPI processed a record 540 crore transactions worth Rs 9.6 lakh crore.
In India, WhatsApp competes with Google Pay, Paytm, which is supported by SoftBank and Ant Group, and Walmart’s PhonePe. Online transactions, loans, and e-wallet services have been fast expanding in India, partly to a government drive to encourage the country’s cash-loving merchants and consumers to accept digital payments.
PhonePe and Google Pay together dominate roughly 81 percent of the UPI market.
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