WhatsApp Payments based on UPI will be limited to person-to-person

As reported earlier, WhatsApp Payments feature based on UPI which is United Payments Interface, is already live for some users in the beta version of the app on Google Play Store. However, WhatsApp’s payments feature will be based individually as person to person, which clearly means regular users will be able to make payments to each other without any issues. However, merchants or those registered as Business users on WhatsApp will not be able to receive payments for now. The company has officially declined to comment on when the feature will go live for all users.

WhatsApp Payments was recently spotted in both iOS and Android beta versions of the app and two publications: FoneArena  and GizmoTimes had shared screenshots of the same. However, the feature was only available to a few users and not all Android beta testers could see it. According to the images which has been shared, WhatsApp’s Payments feature will appear as another attachment options to the current ones which include photos, documents, videos, etc.

The WhatsApp UPI-based payments will be peer-to-peer based. The app will also provide support to a majority of the banks on the UPI platform. The launch of WhatsApp payments in India based on UPI has been long awaited. It is said that the company was reportedly testing the feature last year. UPI as a platform allows for direct transfers from the bank account itself. A user requires a bank account linked with their mobile number, a UPI pin and authorisation PIN to carry out transactions.

The Facebook-owned app’s payments feature could play an important role for the Indian market. Immediate competitor Google already has a UPI-based payments app in the market called Google Tez, which according to CEO Sundar Pichiai managed to get 7.5 million users in just five weeks of its day of launch. Tez was launched by Google last year in September.

WhatsApp though has over 200 million users in India alone, and is the leading messaging app in the country. A payments feature like this could bring a change in how people interact with the app and add another important use case. In the meanwhile, India’s leading mobile wallet player Paytm launched a chat feature last year, which many believed was in anticipation of WhatsApp’s upcoming payment feature.