As per licencing terms, the company can offer WhatsApp Pay to ten million users in India in this phase and do a full rollout after meeting all other compliance points.
In
a major development, WhatsApp
will be able to roll out its digital payment platform, WhatsApp Pay,
across India after securing a key regulatory approval on Thursday.
“The
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has granted WhatsApp a
licence to operate its digital payment service in a phased manner,”
a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive told Business Standard on
Friday. The official didn’t want to be quoted.
The
NPCI’s
approval came days after the RBI’s go-ahead. WhatsApp has assured
the regulators that it will comply with the data localisation norms –
a key factor behind the delay of the WhatsApp’s payment service
launch.
In
the first phase, WhatsApp will be able to offer payment services to
10 million users in India. “Pending other compliance points, the
messaging platform will be able to do a full rollout,” the source
said.
Once
the company is able to do a full rollout, it will possibly be one of
the biggest payments players in the country, given that the messaging
service giant counts India as its biggest market with over 400
million users.
Payments
through WhatsApp were introduced to a million users as a part of
trial run in February 2018. WhatsApp started its trial run by
partnering with ICICI Bank. However, the company was awaiting
regulatory nod to go live. The service is based on the Unified
Payments Interface (UPI) standard, which has been developed by the
NPCI.
The
move would put the Menlo Park, California-based social media giant in
direct competition with players like Alphabet’s Google Pay,
Walmart-owned PhonePe, Amazon Pay and Alibaba-backed Paytm. These
companies are already locked in a fierce battle to dominate the
digital payments space in India.
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