WhatsApp New Feature: WhatsApp Pay may roll out soon in India: Report

WhatsApp may soon roll out its payments service, WhatsApp Pay, in India after having met the data localisation requirements set as per the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) norms.

The Facebook-owned messaging app has got a nod from the National Payments Corp. of India for meeting its data localisation requirements. As per the RBI rules, payments data, information on payments or settlement transactions, customer data, among other information, has to be stored in India.

An affidavit filed by RBI in the Supreme Court last week said NPCI had told the central bank in June that it was satisfied with WhatsApp’s compliance with the regulator’s data storage rules and was good to go live on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform, reported Mint.

Moneycontrol could not independently verify the report.

“We would like to confirm that WhatsApp has satisfied the data localisation requirements based on CERT-IN auditor’s reports and we hereby are giving ICICI Bank (payment service provider bank for WhatsApp) the approval to go live," the affidavit submitted by RBI to the court said.

The messaging app is now offering its payments service on a trial basis to a limited number of users.

A WhatsApp spokesperson said that the company is now ready to provide its payments service to users in India. “We understand NPCI is satisfied with WhatsApp’s compliance with RBI’s payments guidelines on data localisation. Our team has worked hard to meet these standards over the last year," the spokesperson said.

WhatsApp currently has over 400 million users in India. With the increasing use of UPI-based services, the rollout of WhatsApp payments services could prove beneficial for the company. In July 2020, over 1.49 billion UPI transactions were carried out. Google Pay currently dominates the UPI-based payments market with over 42 percent share, followed by Flipkart’s Phone Pe with 35 percent market share.