WhatsApp to double the number of users on its payment platform in India to 40 Mn people
- ByStartupStory | November 29, 2021
Earlier the Facebook-owned instant messaging service had requested the government to remove the cap of users on its payment service. Now, the NCPI has agreed to increase its number of users which is currently capped at 20 Mn, to be grown in a graded manner.
The NPCI is an organisation that operates retail payments and settlements in India. It has created an ecosystem of payments and settlements that include the RuPay card, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM), BHIM Aadhaar, National Electronic Toll Collection (NETC Fastag), and Bharat BillPay.
According to a notification it released in November, third-party app providers (TPAP) like Google Pay, PhonePe etc. would not be allowed to process more than 30% of the total volume of transactions occurring through UPI interfaces. This restriction seems to be aimed at avoiding the formation of an oligopoly and encouraging competition.
Flipkart-backed PhonePe and Google’s Google Pay currently own 47% and 34% of the UPI payments market share but they have been allowed until December 2023 to bring it below the 30% threshold set by the NPCI. This restriction is also why WhatsApp can’t leverage its more than 500 Mn users in the country to increase adoption of Whatsapp Pay.
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