- After its release in India, only 310,000 transactions were made through Whatsapp pay last month.
- NPCI to impose 30% cap on Third Party App Providers
Did you know Whatsapp offers an option of online money transfer within its app? If yes, how often have you used it? If no, it isn’t surprising at all!
How is it that almost all of us use Whatsapp but most of us aren’t aware of this feature? Whatsapp Pay was introduced just last month in India. But isn’t one month enough for such a big company to make significance?
Let’s know more.
Why Whatsapp Pay Is Getting A Cold Response?
All the active users of Whatsapp didn’t get this feature at the same time. Though the total users of whatsapp are around 400 million, National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) allowed Whatsapp to test its UPI feature in an installment of 20 million users first. Because of this most people aren’t even aware of the feature let alone using it.
Only 310,000 UPI transactions were carried out through Whatsapp Pay in the month of November. While the competitors like Google Pay and Phonepe alone experience around 8.5 Cr and 8.3 Cr transactions respectively. The dominance of Google Pay and Phonepe has also leisured the growth of potential competitors like Paytm and Amazon pay. This is making it more difficult for Whatsapp to establish itself in the UPI market.
Will The New Policy Issued By NPCI Help Whatsapp?
In order to protect the rapidly growing UPI ecosystem in India, NPCI has made it official that a cap of 30% will be applicable to all Third Party App Providers (TPAP) from the start of next year. This means that no TPAP like Google Pay, Phonepe, Paytm or even Whatsapp pay can exceed more than 30% of the total amount of UPI transactions.
This will affect the TPAPs that are leading the market, especially Google pay and Phonepe as each of them have already acquired 40% of the UPI transactions individually. This left only a 20% room for all the other apps like Paytm, Amazon pay, Mobikwik etc.
Hence the initiation of cap will give a chance to other UPI platforms to make a significant identity in the market. Google Pay had recently expressed disappointment towards the introduction of cap by NPCI.
How Are Experts Reacting To WhatsApp Pay?
Faisal Kawoosa, co-founder and chief analyst of techARC said, “Many people don’t open WhatsApp with the intention of making payments, unlike Paytm and Google Pay where you naturally go to make payments”
Nevertheless, most of the other experts believe that integration of a payment option in a chat window is giving Whatsapp an advantage. Nowadays Whatsapp is used by businesses to share their product samples and to finalise a deal as well. In such cases an inbuilt payment feature will be preferred more than a separate app.
Beside Whatsapp already has a gigantic customer base who find whatsapp reliable. Hence through some promotional deals, cashback and business centric features, Whatsapp has a good chance to standout in the online payment sector as well.
Anyways, Facebook knows how it can increase the performance of its acquired companies and make them rule the market.