WhatsApp went live with four banks including SBI, HDFC Bank for payment
Instant messaging platform WhatsApp has gone live in India with four banks – State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank – for its payments. WhatsApp, a company owned by Facebook, has given its information through a press note.
WhatsApp, which is considered to be the largest market in India, will now offer its users a Unified Payment Interface (UPI) based payment facility. It was approved to go live in November 2020 by the National Payments Corporation of India. NPCI is India’s flagship payment processor, managed by UPI.
“UPI is a transformative service and we have the opportunity to jointly bring the benefits of our digital economy and financial inclusion to a large number of users who do not already have full access,” said Abhijeet Bose, President, WhatsApp India. NPCI has put a cap of 20 million users on WhatsApp payments but it will be reduced over time.
At an industry event earlier this year, Bose launched its own plans to help drive financial inclusion by launching several financial services on WhatsApp. WhatsApp has over 400 million users in India. WhatsApp has been in beta mode since 2018 where only 10 lakh customers were offered payments.
WhatsApp went live with four banks including SBI, HDFC Bank for payment