WhatsApp Pay on Wednesday announced it is now reside with State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank for its up to 20 million customers in India.
After two years of waiting, Facebook-owned WhatsApp payment service received approval from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in November to go reside on Unified Payment Interface (UPI) with more than 160 supported banks.
WhatsApp can expand its UPI user base in a graded manner beginning with a maximum registered user base of 20 million.
“UPI is a transformative service and we jointly have the opportunity to bring the benefits of our digital economy and financial inclusion to a large number of users who have not had full access to them before,” Abhijit Bose, Head of WhatsApp, India, stated throughout the Facebook ‘Fuel for India’ virtual occasion.
The peer-to-peer (P2P) payment function is out there now in 10 Indian regional language versions of WhatsApp.
“We introduced banking services on WhatsApp in April. Over two million users have adopted banking services on WhatsApp in this short span. Now with WhatsApp Payments, there is a unique opportunity to scale essential financial services to people all over the country with ease,”
-stated Bijith Bhaskar, Head – Digital Channels & Partnership, ICICI Bank.
According to a most recent report by Bengaluru-primarily based study firm RedSeer, digital payments in India are anticipated to attain $94 trillion by the economic year 2025.
“We’re excited and privileged to partner with State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and AXIS Bank to bring simple and secure digital payments to WhatsApp users across India,” Bose stated in a statement.
SBI now presents UPI services via the WhatsApp Payments, bringing the comfort of straightforward and immediate mobile primarily based payments.
Parag Rao, Country Head-Payments Business, Consumer Finance, Digital Banking & Marketing, HDFC Bank stated that the partnership with WhatsApp Pay is but yet another critical step toward reaching economic inclusion and generating economical economic services out there to Indians.
“Such partnerships will further fuel the economic growth and development of the nation,” Rao added.
WhatsApp had stated earlier that the payments function is created with a robust set of safety and privacy principles, such as getting into a individual UPI PIN for every payment.
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In India, the WhatsApp payment service competes against main players like Paytm, Google Pay and PhonePe, amongst other individuals.