WhatsApp India Payments Service Launch Nears
(27 June 2018 - India) WhatsApp announced it is updating its terms of service and privacy policy to reflect the addition of payment features ahead of the official launch of the service in India.
The new feature will allow users to send digital payments to family and friends like they are sending a photo, file or any other attachment. Following the launch in India WhatsApp is expected to extend the feature to the group’s global user base.
WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in India, with over 200 million users, significantly larger than user bases in any other market. Almost one million user are currently ‘testing’ WhatsApp's payments service in India, which is the largest base for the Facebook owned company with over 1.5 billion users globally. The group has partnered with the top three private banks in India including Axis Bank, HDFC Bank and ICICI, to be followed by the State Bank of India after the successful launch of “necessary systems” takes place.
The long awaited launch of the full payments functionality is expected in coming weeks. As part of the updated terms, WhatsApp said it may collect additional information when payments service is used. WhatsApp has worked closely with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and received permission to align closely with banks to facilitate financial transactions via Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
"We still do not have a launch date but this terms and policy update bring us one step closer to full launch," a WhatsApp spokesperson said. "We've added new features like interoperability that request additional information related to WhatsApp payments user and user of any BHIM UPI-enabled app. We'll be updating our WhatsApp payments Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to provide simpler language on how the payments feature operates. It also reflects the addition of payment interoperability features we've added since the beta started."
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