Did you know India Lifts Payment Restrictions for WhatsApp Pay, Boosting Meta’s Market Reach
Meta has just received some great news for the new year as India opts to
lift all payment restrictions for WhatsApp. This is a major win for the
tech giant as the country is one of the biggest in terms of user
market.
It’s also great news for Meta which seeks to compete against other leading fintech rivals operating in that region. The NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) shared more on this front including how the leading payment regulator overseeing the instant payment domain gave the green signal on Tuesday.
This
means WhatsApp can roll out its popular WhatsApp pay to all users
across the industry. Today, the platform has more than 500 million users
in the country. This decision removes the previous 100M user cap seen
for WhatsApp Pay. it’s also a major move that highlights a significant
shift in the cautious approach taken for the company’s payment
ambitions.
As
per the NPCI, the company insisted more on how it’s a slow rollout
where the initial service was limited to just 40M at the start before
extending it to hit a cap of 100M in 2022. This expansion comes under
the country’s UPI which processes nearly 13B transactions monthly. It’s
now going back and forth with the concerns linked to market
concentration. The majority of the market share belongs to Google Pay
and PhonePe which gets its support from Walmart. This makes up 85% of
the overall transaction share.
We saw the NPCI push back another
proposal to put this 30% cap on any app’s transaction share related to
this network. Per the NPCI, the rule won’t come into play until 2026.
For
now, they are committed to giving rise to payments on the popular
texting platform that makes things simple, safe, and reliable. As per
one WhatsApp spokesperson, the goal is to increase value and make users’
lives more convenient. With such means, people can book tickets easily
and go shopping. They also hope to increase digital payments and carry
on with contributions to India’s digital agenda.
