WhatsApp to boost UPI adoption for next 500 million Indian users

Meta-owned WhatsApp Thursday said that its simple, reliable and secure experience will accelerate adoption of unified payments interface (UPI) for the next 500 million Indians.

Welcoming the approval by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for an additional 60 million users for UPI for WhatsApp -- taking its cap to 100 million for Payments -- Manesh Mahatme, Director-Payments, WhatsApp India, told IANS that the UPI has been an unquestioned success.

"We believe there is an opportunity for UPI to have an even greater impact for the country -- especially in rural regions where digital and financial inclusion can significantly improve peoples' lives," Mahatme said.

"We believe that 'payments on WhatsApp' can be a key partner to NPCI and the RBI as we all aim to scale adoption of UPI and financial inclusion to those most in need," he added.

In November last year, the NPCI approved increasing the user cap for WhatsApp's payment service from the current 20 million to 40 million users.

The NPCI has been giving approval to WhatsApp in a phased manner so that the competition in the digital payment space in the country is not stifled.

"Since our initial approval from the NPCI, we have been working to deliver a simple, reliable and secure experience for WhatsApp users that we hope will accelerate adoption of UPI for the anext five hundred million' Indians," Mahatme told IANS.

As part of this roadmap, he said that the company has planned significant investments in 'payments on WhatsApp' across India "including 'India-first' features and focus on creating awareness and driving adoption among our users".

As the adoption of 'payments on WhatsApp' increases with users across the country, the company looks forward to working with the NPCI to further expand it to all users.

WhatsApp kicked off its ambitious peer-to-peer (P2P) digital payments pilot project in India in 2018 with nearly 10 lakh users.

According to the NPCI, UPI had processed 5.04 billion transactions till March 29, amounting to Rs 8.88 trillion.