WhatsApp looks to scale payment business in India with a financial inclusion pilot

WhatsApp announced a financial inclusion pilot programme on December 15 as the Meta-owned messaging app looks to scale up its payments business in India.The announcement was made at Meta’s annual event Fuel For India 2021.

Through this pilot called ‘Digital Payments Utsav’ that started on October 15, WhatsApp said, it has familiarised villagers with various aspects of digital payments in 500 villages across Karnataka and Maharashtra. This includes signing them up for the UPI, setting up a UPI account and training on best safety practices of using digital payments.

WhatsApp India head Abhijit Bose said they started this pilot to onboard the next 500 million people to the country’s digital payments ecosystem.

“We believe that WhatsApp’s ease of use and reliability can promote the adoption of UPI with users, including those at the bottom of the pyramid. We will continue to contribute meaningfully in this journey of educating users at the grassroots, so they can trust digital payments, as they gradually make the transition from a ‘cash-only’ way of financial life,” he said.

WhatsApp has partnered with village commerce start-up 1Bridge for the on-ground implementation of this pilot initiative.

WhatsApp has been ramping up its efforts to expand its payments service in India in recent months.

As part of this drive, the company made the payments service more visible by featuring the rupee icon in the chat composer, between the attachment and the camera icons. It allowed the camera icon on the WhatsApp home screen to be used to scan QR codes and make payments across 20 million stores in the country. The company has also rolled out marketing initiatives to drive its discoverability.

These efforts seem to be paying off as the platform has seen an uptick over the last few months. Transacted values grew to Rs 149.4 crore in November, making a 43.4 percent increase from Rs 104.2 crore a month back and up from Rs 62 crore in September, according to the latest data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

While the transactions dipped to 2.11 million in November from 2.6 million in October, it is still more than double of 1 million in September.

The NPCI also increased the user cap for WhatsApp’s payment service to 40 million from 20 million on November 27. Moneycontrol had reported on November 10 that the NPCI will increase this in a phased manner so that the payments system is not overwhelmed.

“They had been pushing for the cap to be lifted altogether but the NPCI didn’t want to do that and so they need to increase it to 40 million. Their numbers have gone up significantly and are very close to breaching the 20 million limit,” a source had told Moneycontrol at the time.

WhatsApp, which counts India as its biggest market with more than 530 million users, is also working with rural and cooperative banks to accelerate the adoption and usage of digital banking for their underserved customer base.

“Last year, we had highlighted mobile banking services from leading banks which had reached meaningful numbers. However, for us, banking via WhatsApp could only be achieved and be inclusive if we could replicate successful mobile banking templates with rural and cooperative banks,” Bose had said in September.

Read: WhatsApp can help onboard next 500 million users on UPI, says India head