It’s still not enough, though
WhatsApp is by far the largest messaging service in India. It’s used by millions daily, not only for catching up with friends and family, but also for placing orders at nearby grocery stores, carrying out business dealings, group studies, and so much more. In a bid to turn the service into more than just a messaging platform, WhatsApp rolled out peer-to-peer payment support in the country using the Universal Payments Interface (UPI) last year. The company managed to do this after almost two years of extensive trials during which it repeatedly failed to get the necessary approval from Indian regulatory bodies. Despite being granted consent in late 2020, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) would only allow WhatsApp to onboard 20 million users for its payments service. Over a year later, that restriction is now being doubled to 40 million.
A new Reuters report details that WhatsApp requested the NPCI to remove the cap altogether. However, the regulator has supposedly allowed the company to double its userbase to 40 million instead. Due to the restriction, WhatsApp has not widely rolled out or promoted its payment service. In fact, it is yet to reach the initial 20 million user limit. Nonetheless, while the new 40 million user cap will give the Meta-owned platform some breathing room, it still won’t be sufficient as the service has over 500 million potential users for WhatsApp Pay in the country.
Based on UPI, WhatsApp Pay makes it extremely easy to send or receive money from a person via a WhatsApp chat. It’s looking to take advantage of its popularity and capture a large slice of India’s digital transactions pie, which has been rapidly growing since late 2016. Google Pay, Paytm, and PhonePe are currently the three largest UPI apps in India. However, if the NPCI removed the cap from WhatsApp, it would only be a matter of time before the messaging service breaks it into the top three.
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