WhatsApp have announced the launch of its new peer-to-peer payments feature in India. The new feature enables WhatsApp users to send and receive money using the Indian government’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) standard.
WhatsApp are in competition with messaging services like Google’s Tez, and digital wallet platform Paytm. However, India is WhatsApp’s largest market, with over 200 million active users chatting through the messaging app daily, putting them in a very strong position to see high adoption of the payments feature.
“It is no surprise that WhatsApp is expanding its services beyond messaging, and the introduction of peer-to-peer payments is a stepping stone towards the one-stop-shop model that is so popular elsewhere in Asia”, Phil Pomford, General Manager for Asia-Pac, Global Enterprise eCommerce at Worldpay, Inc said.
“With a whole range of commerce and payment services, the likes of Tencent and Alibaba move far beyond pure social interaction, instead offering an entire ecosystem of services which is integrated into every aspect of consumers’ daily lives.”
India’s eCommerce market is only set to grow, meaning WhatsApp’s diversification is timely, and a sign of what’s to come.
“Our own data indicates that India’s eCommerce market is set to grow by an astounding 24% per year over the next four years, making it worth US$104bn by 2021 (according to Worldpay Global Payments Report 2017)”, Pomford continued.
“The country is poised to become the next centre of explosive eCommerce growth, even more so now that the demonetization drive is accelerating the push towards digital currencies. All of these factors add up to make India the ideal market for WhatsApp to diversify its offering, with this new ecosystem play fundamentally changing the way social platforms are used by Indian consumers.”
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