In push to digital payments, WhatsApp Pay now live ln India for 20 mn users

The Instant Messaging application WhatsApp has finally rolled out WhatsApp's Payments (commonly known as WhatsApp Pay) feature to users across India for up to 20 million users.

The feature has been launched with support from banking partners State Bank of India, HDFC, ICICI, and Axis Bank.

According to Mashable, WhatsApp designed its payments feature on National Payments Corporation of India's (NPCI) Unified Payment Interface (UPI) system and was granted approvals to go live recently in November 2020 on a peer to peer (P2P) basis. It has enabled people to transfer money securely and easily, just like sending a message through WhatsApp.

"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. 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," said Abhijit Bose, Head of WhatsApp, India, in a press release.

As reported by Mashable, these collaborations between the country's apex banking organizations and WhatsApp Payments, enabled by UPI, aim to boost the digital ecosystem to the unbanked and accelerate the Government of India's agenda of building a more digitally enabled Bharat.

"Banking on WhatsApp offers immense convenience to our customers as it allows them to bank seamlessly while they are on WhatsApp. [...] Now with WhatsApp Payments, there is a unique opportunity to scale essential financial services to people all over the country with ease," said Mr Bijith Bhaskar, Head - Digital Channels & Partnership, ICICI Bank in a press release.

"We are delighted to partner with WhatsApp and wish them the very best. We look forward to continuing offering ease and convenience to our customers by providing them with a host of services through this partnership," he added.