WhatsApp to start pilots for micro-pension, lending in India

BENGALURU: WhatsApp India head Abhijit Bose says that the company will start multiple pilots in areas like digital lending, micro-insurance and micro-pension besides helping MSME’s digitise over the next 18 months, outlining its plans for financial services the first time. He also said that while WhatsApp has about 400 million users, it can bring at least 200 million new users to UPI (unified payment interface) payments as it takes on Alibaba and Softbank-backed Paytm, Walmart-backed Phonepe besides units of Amazon and Google.

The statement by Bose comes at a time when WhatsApp is likely to get a go-ahead for its digital payments business under UPI, which has been stuck in beta with just 1 million users for a year, for a broader rollout. WhatsApp’s parent company Facebook also invested $5.7 billion in Reliance Industries earlier this year, and the two are also expected to collaborate on the e-commerce business.