Iski kya zaroorat thi 🤑
WhatsApp counts India among its biggest markets and often comes up with locally relevant features to cater to its millions of users there. The messaging app’s payment service was piloted in the country and went public a while ago, but the reception has been lukewarm so far. To stir up some excitement around it during the ongoing festive season, WhatsApp is adding a total of five sticker packs with a whole lot of cultural references around how Indians handle their money that only desis will get.
Be it for a Rakhi gift or asking for Eidi, there’s a lot of fun stuff in these stickers that will put a smile on your or your recipient’s face. All these cultural nuances come from the local artists that WhatsApp has partnered with to create these stickers: Anjali Mehta, Anuja Pothireddy, Mira Malhotra, Neethi, and Osheen Siva. While making a payment in WhatsApp, you’ll now have the option to attach one of these stickers to add a personal touch to it, though you can send them without payments, too. These fresh packs are already live for anyone to download on WhatsApp, but you can take a look at the screenshots below before you go ahead and install them.
The idea of payments baked into the messaging app that everyone uses was promising and could’ve established WhatsApp in the payment space. However, the Facebook-owned messaging app came a bit late to the party. Google Pay and PhonePe already dominate India’s UPI market, leaving little space for new entrants, even those as resourceful as WhatsApp.
With these new stickers, WhatsApp attempting to nudge Indian users towards its own payment service for use cases that are intertwined with Indian culture, be it the shagun ka lifafa or getting cash from your relatives as aashirwaad when they visit you. In any case, these stickers should still be fun to use even if you don’t use WhatsApp Pay.
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