WhatsApp is finally going to launch its payments service this year. However, it will start with India.
The Facebook owned service has been testing the payment service for over a year with about 1 million people and is ready to roll it out commercially. However It is waiting for approval from India’s banking regulator before it can go live.
According to company’s global head Will Cathcart in a statement, “WhatsApp Payments will make it as easy to pay someone on WhatsApp as it is to send a message. We can’t wait to provide this service to our users across India this year.”
WhatsApp with an estimated 1.5 billion users around the world, has over 400 million users in India alone.
WhatsApp payments would need to contend with strong competitors in the Indian market like Alphabet’s Google Pay, Softbank- and Alibaba-backed Paytm and Walmart’s PhonePe
