With so many applications launching in India for person-to-person payment, even WhatsApp for Business is trying their hands in this market. Just to try their hands , WhatsApp has introduced a new payment feature in India which makes the money transfer possible between one whatsApp user to another but this does not include merchant accounts at all. As WhatsApp is in the testing phase of this feature, it has launched in beta version.
The major objective of WhatsApp p2p payment behind launching this feature is to boost the digital payments in India and as WhatsApp is quite popular and is available with majority of the people, it will be a strong competition to other digital wallets. This feature is yet to enter the market publicly and also is available only at some restricted places and not throughout India.
WhatsApp Company has been working on this feature for quite a long time. This Payment Transaction on WhatsApp will be done through Unified Payment Interface (UPI) and many Indian banks like HDFC, Axis, ICICI, State Bank of India etc is ready to support whatsapp in launching this feature all across India.
With a strong of more than 300 million active users across India, launch of this feature will prove to be beneficial for WhatsApp and is sure to give good competition to other Digital Payment Applications.
The ones who are fortunate enough to become a part of WhatsApp Testing of beta version for this feature will receive an option of Payment in their setting category of WhatsApp menu. On receiving this feature you need to configure it. Configuration includes verification process via Phone number and also SMS ending up with opting for a bank. After this, the Payment option will be available for use and will be visible in the same panel where you get to see options like Camera, Document, Photo & Video Library, Location, Contact.
Once the users get this feature available they can choose the list of the banks they wish to link with the UPI. All this will take them to create a UPI account with the help of UPI application or this can also be done on any of the bank’s website.
The giant of Social Media, Facebook is also a step ahead in this feature. They have got all the approvals from Indian Government for integrating UPI into the messaging services. Apart from that facebook is also running their hand on group video calling feature which will allow 3 people at a time talking to each other through video call.
WhatsApp feature is not even available to all the beta testers but can be used only by few of them. Users are facing certain problems in linking their bank accounts to UPI for which WhatsApp is working on solving these issues of the beta testers and is expecting to launch this feature soon for both Android and iOS platforms too.
WhatsApp is expected to dominate other Person-to-Person Payment Applications in India as many people here using smartphones with less storage in their phones of which maximum storage is being utilised by WhatsApp.
