Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday said India is a very special and important country with a remarkable entrepreneurship culture, as he sought to push deeper the just-launched payments services that allow users to make payments over WhatsApp.
Last month, Facebook-owned WhatsApp received approval from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for rolling out its payments services in India. In 2018, WhatsApp started testing its UPI-based payments services in India — a global first — with about a million users.“We just launched WhatsApp payments in India last month — now you can send money to your friends and family through WhatsApp, as easily as sending a message. That was possible because of the UPI system that has been built in India,” Zuckerberg said during a fireside chat with Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani.
Following the NPCI approval, WhatsApp has started its payments service in the country in a “graded” manner, starting with a maximum registered user base of 20 million in UPI. WhatsApp — which counts India as its biggest market with over 400 million users — will compete with players like Paytm, Google Pay, Walmart-owned PhonePe and Amazon Pay in the country.