The popular instant messaging app, WhatsApp recently launched UPI enabled payments feature in India. The feature introduced money transfer services allowing users to send and receive money from contacts and UPI addresses. Now it appears the Facebook-owned company is working on introducing a new feature. Lately, some WhatsApp users are noticing a new feature that lets them request money from their friends and family. There is a new “Request Money” option beside the “Pay Money” option for sending money to contacts. The feature is part of the WhatsApp latest beta version (2.18.113) on Android. This is still a beta version meaning that it has not been rolled out to the public version of the app yet. The twitter user @FidatoCA first spotted this feature and only pops-up when you try to request money using a UPI address. When we checked for the same, the feature didn't appear.
If you want to request money from any of your contacts, you’ll need to navigate to Settings > Payments > New Payment and enter the UPI address or scan the QR code.
Following UPI address verification of the user, you will see that the options in the pop-up have changed. The pop-up now shows you both a ‘Request Money’ and ‘Pay Money’ option.
You can tap on Request Money, and then just enter the amount and send the request. All the pending requests expire in 24 hours, and you can see the transactions in the Payments menu under the settings. The status is updated once your contact accepts or declines the request.
At the moment the “Request Money” feature only works with UPI IDs. If you already have the contact stored in WhatsApp, their name will appear in a list, and you can also add any other VPA you want directly into the app.
For those uninitiated, WhatsApp payment system is currently limited to Indian market only. The payment systems are based on IMPS, which ensures that the transactions are instant and facilitated bank to bank. With over 200 million active users in the country, WhatsApp finally seems to have found a way with digital payments to monetise its app.
