WhatsApp UPI transactions see steady uptick in September, October after renewed push

In September this year, WhatsApp said it is doubling down on growing its payment service in India. Its renewed efforts to boost its payment play seem to be paying off as its transactions on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform are seeing an uptick, a year after it went live.

As per data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for October, WhatsApp saw 26 lakh transactions, amounting to Rs 104 crore. This increase is more than two-fold from the 10 lakh transactions in September.

October transaction values saw a month-on-month growth of 67 percent from Rs 62 crore in September.

However, WhatsApp’s share in monthly UPI payments continues to remain at a minuscule at 0.06 percent as compared to rivals such as PhonePe and Google Pay, which have a 47 percent and 34 percent share, respectively.

While WhatsApp was expected to disrupt the payments space with its large user base (over 400 million) in India, it has not taken off in a big way. Importantly, NPCI has also put a cap of 20 million users for the company’s payment service. WhatsApp is still in the process of utilising its user base completely.

The company started ramping up efforts to increase the number of users in September this year. Speaking at the Global Fintech Fest 2021 on September 30, Manesh Mahatme, Director, Payments, WhatsApp India, had said that they are scaling up the service in a phased manner, right now, and partnering with NPCI to work through the scale.

Mahatme said the focus will be on accelerating marketing initiatives to increase awareness on the payments feature on the instant messaging app.

As part of this drive, the company made the payment icon more visible by featuring the rupee icon directly in the chat composer, between the attachment and the camera icon. It also allowed users to use the camera icon on WhatsApp's home screen to scan UPI QR codes to make payments across 20 million stores in India.

"Millions of Indians today click on the WhatsApp camera icon and use that to take a picture and send it. We believe true inclusion is when customers don’t have to navigate their way through their phone to make a payment. An arrival point is when payments just ‘fits’ into a customer’s intrinsic behaviour," Mahatme had said.

Post these initiatives, WhatsApp’s UPI transactions crossed the 5-lakh range for the first time, breaching the 10-lakh mark in September.

What helped WhatsApp double the number again in October is the beginning of the festival season in the country, coupled with a boost in sentiments as restrictions were lifted across the country.

With the festive fervour behind us, it has to be seen whether this growth for WhatsApp continues in the coming months, led by the company’s efforts to reach out to customers.

"For cultivating and onboarding the next 500 million users to the digital payments ecosystem, users need to be driven by simplicity, trust and inclusivity," Mahatme had said in September.