Post the announcement of demonetization in the country back in November 2016 by our honourable PM, Mr Narendra Modi, the craze for digital payment services has increased a lot. Recently, Samsung launched its Samsung Pay in India, and if the rumours are believed to be true, the popular messaging platform, WhastApp is looking to integrate the UPI payments system directly into the app.
It’s just been a year since the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) came into existence and already it has become an unstoppable force. Companies such as Olacabs and Truecaller have already integrated the service into their applications.
The report cites that WhatsApp is in initial stages of testing the peer-to-peer money transfer method based on the UPI. This also means that WhatsApp could launch a UPI-based payments system in India soon.
To recall, WhatsApp co-founder, Brain Action earlier this year mentioned that the company is looking forward to exploring the digital payments system in India.
WhatsApp recently announced India as its biggest market owing to the country’s massive user base. To give you a fair idea, there are currently over 200 million users in India who use WhatsApp, out of 1 billion worldwide users in total. So, if WhatsApp ever integrates the P2P transfer of money to its app, it will be a huge game changer, and the company should have known it already.
The report also cited that WhatsApp started working on integrating the UPI payments system to the app, but the recent changes in RBI guidelines have forced them to replace the business model.
“The initiative is seen as strategic for Facebook and currently being driven out of the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Its career page lists, among other roles, an opening for a digital transaction lead with knowledge of UPI, Aadhaar, and BHIM, to be based out of Menlo Park,” claims Factordialy.
