WhatsApp’s long-awaited digital payments service goes live in India
WhatsApp has been working on digital, peer-to-peer payments for quite some time now, and the Facebook-owned messaging company appears to have just launched the service in beta in India, one of its most important markets. TechCrunch reports that select users in India have noticed the feature popping up in both the iOS and Android version of WhatsApp, with many celebrating the launch on Twitter. Way back in April of 2017, WhatsApp confirmed it was working on a payments service specifically for India after local media reported on the upcoming feature, but it looks like it’s taken nearly a year for it to arrive, even in just a beta form.
WhatsApp has been working on digital, peer-to-peer payments for quite some time now, and the Facebook-owned messaging company appears to have just launched the service in beta in India, one of its most important markets. TechCrunch reports that select users in India have noticed the feature popping up in both the iOS and Android version of WhatsApp, with many celebrating the launch on Twitter. Way back in April of 2017, WhatsApp confirmed it was working on a payments service specifically for India after local media reported on the upcoming feature, but it looks like it’s taken nearly a year for it to arrive, even in just a beta form.
WhatsApp is not the first instant messaging service to do this (WeChat already has it for a while) but WhatsApp is quite widely used in the Western world and mobile is also a very important payment mechanism especially in Africa. So this is is a very interesting development and may challenge the likes of SnapScan who are already in the mobile payment market as an extra app to be installed.
See https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/8/16991520/whatsapp-digital-payments-india-beta-launch
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WhatsApp’s long-awaited digital payments service goes live in India It’s just a beta for now |