Indian digital payment industry is booming, and with the platforms like Paytm, Amazon Pay, and Google Pay, people have got many choices to opt for. On 24th April Facebook-owned WhatsApp also announced that it is going to launch a digital payment service, WhatsApp Pay, in India, giving a clear message to the leaders of digital payment, that they need to brace up for a big competition.
For now, Paytm, an almost decade-old company, backed by Alibaba, is the biggest local digital payment service in India. On the same league, Amazon has also launched its payment service recently, Amazon Pay UPI for Android customers for peer-to-peer payments, whereas, Google Pay (earlier Google Tez) has got a hold on a share of 45 million users, operating $81 billion in transactions in March. There has been also news from Apple of planning to launch its Apple Pay service in India soon.
Though Paytm has been ruling the Indian market for the past decade, with the rise of other services including Google Pay and Amazon Pay, it has become easy to believe that Whats App Pay can easily influence people with its payment services.
Since WhatsApp has been the most loved app in India, so with a user base of over 300 million in India, it won’t be tough for WhatsApp Pay to challenge the existing digital payment services. In fact, its parent company, Facebook has got additional Indian userbase of over 300 million people, which is huge, as Paytm alone entertains only 230 million users. This way launching a peer-to-peer UPI based payment service will easily attract most of its users as it will be easy for them to transact on WhatsApp.
“Indians love WhatsApp and will love the convenience of transacting through the app. I foresee a trend wherein entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises start embracing and using WhatsApp Pay. This will contribute to, and increase their creditworthiness. In turn, this trend will enable them to easily borrow credit from formal sources, such as banks.” Prabhu Ram, head of the Industry Intelligence Group at CMR, said in the report.
According to WhatsApp, in an app test, over 1 million people were able to send and receive money in a safe and secure manner. The company has also told the Supreme Court on May 3 that it will be complying with the RBI norms before starting its payment service in India, and it is willing to contribute to India’s financial inclusion goals.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.