NPCI gives a green signal to WhatsApp Pay

Facebook Inc.’s WhatsApp messaging platform on Thursday got the much-awaited approval to enter the digital payments market from National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI), which also capped the transaction volume clocked by a company to 30% of overall payments on the Unified Payments Infrastructure (UPI) platform.

NPCI, which operates the UPI platform in the country, said WhatsApp can go live through the multi-bank model and can expand its UPI user base in a graded manner, starting with a maximum registered user base of 20 million.

WhatsApp has been running its UPI-based payment system, WhatsApp Pay, in Beta since 2018, with 1 million users. One of the biggest hurdles for the platform continued to be Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) data localisation norms for payment providers in the country, which the company had to comply with.