WhatsApp Pay – A new UPI based payment application by Facebook’s acquired messaging application “Whatsapp”. There are reports that WhatsApp payments application could be launched by next month in India with bank partners such as SBI, ICICI, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank etc. These banks are already on NPCI enabled UPI platform and extended their services to Whatsapp for payment features. India might be among the first in the world to get the WhatsApp Pay enabled feature.
Whatsapp Pay enables the user to transfer money from the chat window itself with UPI PIN.
Some of the major players which have helped the adoption of UPI include digital wallet apps such as Paytm, Google Tez, PhonePe and Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM).
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Whatsapp Pay will give a tough competition to Google’s UPI based application “Tez”, which is also an UPI based payment application supported by partner bank like SBI, HDFC, Axis Bank and NPCI. Currently Whatsapp is having 200 million monthly active users. Enabling of UPI based payment features will boost the digital transactions in massive way. Whatsapp Pay is as like WeChat Pay, after the launch WeChat has gone on to control over 40 percent of the payments market in China.
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Whatsapp Pay is already in beta phase of testing with one of the partner bank and the product to go live for consumers by the end of February. Whatsapp is already testing the final phase of testing with selected group of users from partner bank’s i.e. State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank.
The major challenge in integrating the UPI with Whatsapp chatting application is encryption of data at various levels in order to keep the data safe. Further, the issues related to reconciliation & settlement is also look after between various banking partners.
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UPI based application validate the users through the banking interface, WhatsApp is expected to identify the sender and receiver on the back end. As its payment platform will be integrated with the banks, WhatsApp will also identify customer accounts and eventually UPI will help with the settling of the transactions.
