It’s Confirm Now, WhatsApp Pay Will Hit India’s Floor This Year!

After a long period, grappling with the Indian government over data localization and payments data sharing with the Face book, WhatsApp pay has now come up with the beta version. Yes, it's true, WhatsApp pay will hit India's floor this year. In the year 2014, Mark Zuckerberg, The founder of Facebook bought WhatsApp in $19 billion and since then he wanted to monetize this huge platform.

To add a new wallet feature in WhatsApp, Face book has created the required data storage facilities in India to introduce WhatsApp Pay to the entire Indian user base, which is estimated to be between 350 million and 400 million users. Recently, the head of WhatsApp India 'Abhijit Bose' revealed that “The social messaging company’s focus is to expand digital and financial inclusion, to help businesses across India”. It’s going to be one of the best fintech solutions soon.

According to Digital Payments (2018 edition), in India, the digital payments industry is estimated to grow to $1 Trillion by 2023. In this fast-growing phase of the digital payments industry, strong players for example Paytm, PhonePe, and Google Pay may cause a freakish rift in the entry of WhatsApp Payments.

Before we discuss anything in deep, let’s talk about WhatsApp Pay.

What is WhatsApp Pay?

WhatsApp Pay is a seamless money transfer app which works conveniently on Android as well as iOS smart-phones. Through WhatsApp Pay, users can send or request money with their friends.

Face book has made London, a key hub for the development of this Fintech solution. Around one hundred people are hired to lead new WhatsApp payments to push it according to the FT. It’s going to become the best Fintech mobile app in the future.

Blue Prints of Digital Payment App WhatsApp Pay

The upcoming feature of WhatsApp Pay could follow the footprints of the social networking app WeChat Pay. This social networking app is the most popular China’s money transfer app with about 800 million monthly active users. Initially, WeChat only offered chatting facility but then it converted its existing users to the payments' users using the same platform. WhatsApp is going to do the same in India with its ingrained user base. Using P2P offerings WhatsApp Pay will try to attract connecting users just like WeChat as P2P was the main reason behind the success of WeChat Pay. This will help WhatsApp Pay to leverage its user base in the best possible way.

Existing Competitors 

With the growing internet stabbing and number of increasing mobile applications, many companies have launched their wallet apps. So for WhatsApp Pay, the competition level is quite high as all the other wallet apps are doing great in the market.

Some of the existing competitors for WhatsApp Pay are:

• Google Pay
• Samsung Pay
• MobiKwik
• Paytm
• FreeCharge
• PhonePe
• Ola Money

What are the Indian Government Norms for WhatsApp Pay?

Based on the Economic Times report, “Indian authorities are concerned that WhatsApp payment service might share user data with other group companies like Facebook and Instagram while compromising the security, privacy and non-commercial information of its subscribers.”  Last year in August, Face book had to put a project on hold just because of these data storage concerns. Since then WhatsApp is having a tough time in India regarding payments. The Indian government had spelled out some Indian norms that WhatsApp must adhere to including:

• Complying with the Reserve Bank of India’s data localization rules.
• Setting up an office in India.
• Appointing a grievance officer and formulating a team in India for the same.

After so many discussions with the India government, Face book has recently set up its data storage facilities in India and is reportedly preparing for the full launch of its UPI payments app in association with ICICI Bank. WhatsApp Payments app development team has also partnered with HDFC Bank and Axis Bank to launch these payment services. In one of the events, the Company stated that “We’re building a new payment feature for India that enables people to easily send money to each other via WhatsApp”.

Benefits of WhatsApp Payment App

Here are some of the most effective features of WhatsApp Fintech mobile app:

• Firstly, it allows users to send and receive payment to anyone on the WhatsApp contact list from anywhere and at any time.
• Its ‘Pay’ feature allows its users to send funds as simple as sending a message.
• The beneficiary will receive a payment notification on their chat window once the fund transfer has been made.
• There is no need to enter the IFSC code while transferring money.
• The users can also send money via virtual addresses.

Limitations

• Some issues may exist around two-factor authentication during the time of the transaction.
• WhatsApp can share data with Face book in the wake of recent data breach issues of the social media, majorly with the UK-based political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. 

Summing up

As the digital payment market is increasing day by day with a rapid pace, we can assume that the WhatsApp payments feature would compete with a brimmed market in India. WhatsApp Pay will successfully attract the WhatsApp users and will most probably threaten Paytm App which is the top player of this industry.

WhatsApp Pay would skyrocket the digital payment market value and can open the new doors for the financial app development companies.