UPI Based Whatsapp Pay Approved By Govt, But Only 1 Cr Indians Can Access It As Of Now

After more than 2 years of wait, World’s largest messenger app: Whatsapp has received the approval for rolling out Whatsapp Pay in India.

However, only 1 crore Whatsapp users will be able to access the service, as of now.

Is this development a big problem for Paytm, PhonePe and Google Pay?

Govt Of India Approves Whatsapp Pay

In a big development, it has been revealed that Govt of India has finally approved Whatsapp Pay in India.

It will be purely UPI based, and the approval has been granted only after Whatsapp assured Govt that the data will be saved locally.

An unnamed NPCI official said, “The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has granted WhatsApp permission to operate its digital payment service in a phased manner,”

RBI had approved Whatsapp Pay few days back.

We had already reported how Mark Zuckerberg was confident that Whatsapp Pay will be rolled out globally within 6 months.

Only 1 crore Users Can Access Whatsapp Pay As Of Now

Whatsapp has 40 crore users in India.

However, the roll out of Whatsapp Pay will be done in a gradual, phased manner, as per the reports coming in.

In the first phase, 1 crore Whatsapp users will be allowed to access the UPI-based payment mechanism on Whatsapp, and then gradually, the services will be rolled out to all other users.

Infact, Govt had already allowed Whatsapp to test Whatsapp Pay last year, when they had partnered with ICICI Bank for the backend processes.

However, due to the data localization laws being opposed by Whatsapp, commercial rollout was not allowed.

Since 90% of the UPI market is right now controlled by Paytm, PhonePe and Google Pay, Whatsapp’s entry into this market makes things very interesting.

We will keep you updated, as more details come in.