WhatsApp to bet big on payments in India after NPCI nod for 100 mn users

Monthly volume of transactions has stagnated on the platform in the past six months, but value of transactions has doubled

A day after getting permission to raise its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) user base to 100 million, WhatsApp on Thursday said it has plans to make significant investments in ‘payments on WhatsApp’ across India, including India-first features and driving adoption.

The company, however, did not share details of its plans.

The Meta-owned messaging app got its first greenlight for its payments service from the National Payments Council of India (NPCI) in November 2020 with a cap of 20 million users. A year later, in November 2021, the limit was raised to 40 million users. On Wednesday, the NPCI relaxed the