WhatsApp Pay: Facebook’s Foray Into Indian Digital Payment Space Likely To Be Launched Next Week

In its bid to grab market share in India’s digital payments space, social networking giant Facebook is all set to launch WhatsApp Pay in the country as early as next week, said a report in Mint.

According to sources, the much-anticipated launch by WhatsApp, which boasts of more than 200 million users in the country will heat up the digital payments space, which is currently dominated by Paytm, MobiKwik and Google Tez.

"WhatsApp Pay will partner HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank to process the transfers, and State Bank of India (SBI) will join once it has the necessary systems in place," the report quoted sources as saying.

According to a report, WhatsApp started testing its unified payments interface-based payments feature in India towards the beginning of February with 1 million users. It recently also added ‘send to UPI ID’ feature along with ‘transact via QR code’ feature for Indian users.

WhatsApp’s entry into India’s payments market has been similar to that of WeChat, which reshaped payments in China when it expanded beyond messaging.