Where WhatsApp Pay fits into India’s growing digital payments space

That’s how long Facebook-owned WhtasApp has waited to get a nod for its UPI-based payments system from the operator, NPCI. After an initial pilot in February 2018 with a maximum of million users, the regulatory approval was thwarted by data localization measures pushed by the RBI and NPCI. Yesterday, the NPCI finally allowed WhatsApp payments to go live with an initial cap of 20 million users. Facebook joins a market dominated by competitors it knows well from its country of birth: Google through Google Pay, Walmart through its acquisition of Flipkart and PhonePe, and Amazon that launched Amazon Pay only recently but is gaining volumes significantly. On top of these are the individual banks that offer their own UPI payment services. This growth in the fintech sector comes with a spate of innovations over the last decade. Digital payments were the first disruption, and digital lending followed. Today, China is a leader in digital payments, and India has been an able follower. India registers about one-eighth the transactions that China does, but it matches China on growth.

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) currently services a total customer base of approximately 400 million.