Heena Sharma Blog

  Facebook Inc., which was struggling for years to win a permit to operate its WhatsApp payments service in India, finally got approval for the roll-out, marking a breakthrough year for the tech giant that also saw it partnering billionaire Mukesh Ambani to expand in the world’s biggest open technology market. WhatsApp pay can go live using the homegrown, multibank Unified Payments Interface, its operator the National Payments Corporation of India said in a statement Thursday. The U.S. social media giant can gradually expand its UPI base starting with as many as 20 million users. Facebook has been testing WhatsApp payments in India since early 2018. The approval is the latest milestone for the billionaire Mark Zuckerberg-helmed firm that plowed $5.7 billion by agreeing to buy a 9.99% stake in Ambani’s digital services unit, Jio Platforms Ltd., in April. Ambani’s unit has attracted more than $20 billion from investors including Intel Corp. and Google, as global tech giants dou...

  The government has finally allowed Facebook to start operating its WhatsApp payments service in the world's biggest open technology market, that's India.Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today announced that no fee will be charged for sending money via WhatsApp as the company rolled out its payments services in India. In 2018, WhatsApp had started testing its UPI-based payments service in India, which allows users to utilise the messaging platform to send and receive money.The testing was limited to about a million users as it waited for regulatory approvals to come in.On Thursday, NPCI allowed WhatsApp to start its payments service in the country in a "graded" manner, starting with a maximum registered user base of 20 million in UPI. Read More

In a major development, WhatsApp will be able to roll out its digital payment platform, WhatsApp Pay , across India after securing a key regulatory approval on Thursday. “ The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has granted WhatsApp a licence to operate its digital payment service in a phased manner,” a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive told Business Standard on Friday. The official didn’t want to be quoted. The NPCI’s approval came days after the RBI’s go-ahead. WhatsApp has assured the regulators that it will comply with the data localisation norms – a key factor behind the delay of the WhatsApp’s payment service launch. In the first phase, WhatsApp will be able to offer payment services to 10 million users in India. “Pending other compliance points, the messaging platform will be able to do a full rollout,” the source said. Once the company is able to do a full rollout, it will possibly be one of the biggest payments players in the country, given that the...

The latest security incident around WhatsApp could have a bearing on the launch of its digital payment services in India as these systems need to be "fool-proof", a senior government official said. Asked if the Pegasus snooping row could impact WhatsApp's digital payment plans that are still awaiting regulator approvals, the official said the incident will certainly raise question on seriousness of the plans and security aspects, particularly since digital payment is all about fool-proof systems. An e-mail sent to WhatApp on the issue remained unanswered. The messaging app, which has about 400 million users in India, has been testing its payments service in the country since last year with about a million users. WhatsApp's service will compete against the likes of Paytm, PhonePe and Google Pay as and when it is rolled out nationally in India. Official sources said the government is "disturbed" about WhatsApp's lack of disclosures on the hac...

It is an oft-repeated, well known story, only the actors keep changing. For more than a year, Facebook-owned instant messaging giant WhatsApp has been looking to foray into India’s thriving digital payments industry but has moved little beyond a beta launch. Now, it is the $1-trillion US tech giant Apple that cannot find it in itself to launch a proprietary payments product using the country’s flagship Unified Payments Interface (UPI), suggest reports. Apple’s move to shelve its UPI plan comes at a time when Google has placed massive bets on the Indian payments ecosystem, especially with its Google Tez app, recently rebranded to Google Pay, which allows people to pay, collect and request payments using UPI. However, Google isn’t too sure of its own future, either. The company is known to be assessing its plans in India, considering strict data localisation norms. If the UPI values are rising at a breakneck speed each month – they have eclipsed credit card spends in th...

The messaging app will partner HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank to process the transfers, and State Bank of India will join once it has the necessary systems in place Technology News : Facebook   is set to offer its   WhatsApp   payment services to the whole of India as early as next week in an attempt to win market share, even though its partners aren’t all ready, said people familiar with the matter. The messaging app will partner HDFC Bank,   ICICI Bank and   Axis Bank   to process the transfers, and State Bank of India will join once it has the necessary systems in place, the people said.   Facebook   was aiming for a full rollout with four partners but decided to go ahead with just three as its rivals were racing ahead, the people said, asking not to be named as the information isn’t public. The entry of   Whats app   into India’s payments space has been likened to We Chat, which reshaped payments in China...