Facebook’s WhatsApp suffers from stigma in India digital payments

Money is many things, but it’s not fake news. So why block WhatsApp from spreading it around?

India is the laboratory of choice for Western tech firms to test out their mobile payment capabilities so they can be rolled out from Bangladesh to Nigeria. Facebook Inc CEO Mark Zuckerberg entered the fray two years ago by enabling the popular messaging service WhatsApp to send and receive money in India. But the beta version, limited to 1 million users, keeps getting blocked from becoming a full-fledged service.

Meanwhile, rivals such as Alphabet Inc’s Google Pay, Walmart Inc-owned PhonePe and Softbank Group Corp-backed Paytm are dominating India’s mobile transfers landscape. The troika led with 75 million, 60 million and 30 million customers transacting last month, respectively, according to TechCrunch.