WhatsApp Pay Has Officially Launched In India, But NPCI Doesn't Allow It To Have More Than 20 Million Users

After two years of running in test mode and amassing over one million users, WhatsApp Pay has finally been launched in India.

Facebook first introduced the service in 2018 but faced too many regulatory obstacles then to launch it as a full-fledged app.

WhatsApp Pay is built on UPI (short for Unified Payment Interface) – a standard defined by NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India). The app uses the same method as other similar apps like Paytm, PhonePe, and Google Pay.

WhatsApp partners with five banks in India to offer the service. In a video statement, Facebook’s CEO Mark Mark Zuckerberg said UPI has created a world of new opportunities for small and medium businesses – the Indian economy’s backbone.

He also remarked that India was the world’s first nation to do anything like this and expressed his excitement for the role WhatsApp Pay plays in achieving a digital India.

While the service is technically available to everyone in India, NPCI’s regulations forbid it to have more than 20 million users. The reason here is to avoid monopoly.

WhatsApp with its 400 million users in India is clearly a cause for concern. NPCI said the service would be allowed to grow in a graded manner but didn’t say when the next limit is issued.

It’s worth mentioning here that according to NPCI, no payment apps, including WhatsApp Pay and Google Pay, are allowed to process over 30% of transactions a month via UPI.

If NPCI allowed WhatsApp to launch the service to all of the platform’s 400 million users, it would obviously have a huge advantage on the Indian market.

For now, PhonePe and Google Pay are holding the largest shares of India’s UPI-based payment service. The two apps process 1.6 billion transactions from a total of 2 billion in October.

>>> Paytm Had Over 70 Crore Transactions in June, More Than Any Other UPI-Based Apps