Technology for MSMEs: Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp, which reportedly has more than 400 million customers in India, on Thursday announced that the camera icon in its chat composer will now let customers scan any QR code to make payments to millions of shops in India that accept QR code-based payments, according to a enterprise announcement at its Global Fintech Festival. As per WhatsApp, more than 20 million shops, which are normally micro and tiny enterprises, can accept payments by way of QR code in the nation. WhatsApp also introduced the ₹ symbol for customers to use though transacting. Even as its rollout has began, the symbol would be accessible to customers across India only in the coming weeks. The enterprise also operates WhatsApp Business app for tiny organizations in India and has 15 million enterprises working with the service.
“We believe true inclusion is when customers don’t have to navigate their way through their phone to make a payment. An arrival point is when payments just “fits” into a customer’s intrinsic behaviour. Hundreds of millions of shoppers send WhatsApp messages every single day. Spend a lot of minutes on WhatsApp. Take a image and send photographs. We want to make sending dollars as uncomplicated and simplified as sending a message,” stated Manesh Mahatme – Director Payments, WhatsApp India in a statement.
Subscribe to TheSpuzz SME newsletter now: Your weekly dose of news, views, and updates from the world of micro, tiny, and medium enterprises
To ease payments for tiny organizations, the enterprise had last November added a new Shopping Button for shoppers to learn business catalog and buy goods from inside the app. Moreover, in December, WhatsApp had also announced the launch of a Carts feature to strengthen its chat-based obtaining and promoting feature amongst tiny organizations and their shoppers. Small organizations can currently accept payments in WhatsApp Business App working with their UPI manage.
“Any small business owner who uses WhatsApp Business can just type in their UPI address in chat to accept payments from users…The best part about it is that it is fully democratised. You can be registered with any app for UPI. You just need to share your UPI address with customers and get paid to that address into that bank account regardless of which UPI handle you have or where you have signed up to accept payments,” Mahatme stated in his address at the occasion. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in December last year at the Facebook Fuel for India 2020 occasion had stated that the WhatsApp Business app has more than 50 million customers globally of which about 15 million are in India.