WhatsApp Will Not Launch Its UPI-Based Payment Service Until July 2019

After several campaigns in India, WhatsApp now is coming in the payment service market. Indian is one of the most important markets of WhatsApp outside the US, which was accounted for over 20 percent of total users. It is said to wait for an approval from the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) before rolling out the full-scale UPI-based payment service commercially to customers. UPI is the shortened name of Unified Payments Interface, which provided by a system called NCPI. It gives the entities permission to act and fulfill their digital payment business in India.

As per some sources, the company is planning to approach the banking regulator in July, right after making a number of arrangements about payments service data in the country. For your information, RBI had asked all payment system operators to store financial data of Indians locally since April 2018. This includes all of the transaction details, information collected, carried and processed as part of the message as well as payment instructions.

The move was geared towards ensuring that user details remain secure against privacy breaches. Every payment system company had to comply with the localization norms in 6 months. In the meantime, WhatsApp payment system was up to par with the requirements, because the company also stored the data in its overseas servers.

Google rebranded its Tez mobile payment app in India to Google Pay last year.

Google Pay is going ahead of other payment platforms in India, followed by Paytm, Axis Pay, and PhonePe. Last month, Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has also claimed that it will put its own digital payment platform called MiPay to support a large number of customers using Xiaomi devices.

Nowadays, digital payment service is becoming a potential segment in Indian market with about 800 million transactions through UPI-related platforms, which make up to over Rs 1.33 lakh crore just in term of March 2019.