After multiple delays in getting regulatory clearance, WhatsApp is finally set to roll out its payment feature to all users in India soon, probably in the first week of June 2018. Compliance has been WhatsApp’s biggest obstacle with payments, but it looks as if all those concerns have been addressed now.
According to a Bloomberg report, the Facebook-owned messaging company will partner with banks like ICICI, HDFC, and Axis Bank to facilitate transactions between users.
The report further adds that WhatsApp was looking to push the services with four banks, which includes SBI, but they have decided to go ahead with three for now.
WhatsApp Payment was initially available to a limited number of users, as a part of a beta launch. This was later clarified by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the governing body for retail payment and solutions in the country.
It has taken quite a while for WhatsApp to get the necessary clearances, which were highlighted by Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma a few months back. He alleged that the NPCI had allowed WhatsApp to operate payments in the country without offering all the mandatory features.
Sources we spoke to on the subject reiterated that WhatsApp might have found itself in a quandary after recent privacy-related matters were revealed.
According to WhatsApp’s privacy policies, it stated that all payment-related information was shared with Facebook, which went against NPCI’s guidelines for digital payment providers in India. The other issue with the payment feature was its lack of support for other payment options, that is interoperability, and it missed out on two-factor authentication.
With WhatsApp now getting a clean chit, it’ll be interesting to see how it plans to localise accumulating data, which, according to the RBI order, needs to be in place by end of 2018.
Currently, WhatsApp has over 200 million active users in the country, and with payments, the messaging platform hopes to compete with brands like Paytm and Mobikwik, among others.
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