National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in the country, has allowed WhatsApp to go live on its Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
The world-renowned messaging application has been allowed to operate WhatsApp Pay on the indigenous payment platform in the multi-bank model on Thursday.
WhatsApp can expand its user base on WhatsApp Pay in a graded manner, NPCI said in a statement. In the beginning, it has been allowed a maximum user base of 20 million subscribers in UPI.
WhatsApp secured NPCI’s approval to roll out its digital transaction services with limited users in February this year, shortly after Reserve Bank of India gave its nod to the service. WhatsApp Pay was first introduced for one million users under a test run in February 2018 in partnership with ICICI Bank.
The service is based on Unified Payments Interface (UPI) framework developed by the NPCI. It was awaiting regulatory approval for full-fledged roll-out of this service.
In its preliminary approval, NPCI had allowed WhatsApp’s payments service to register 10 million users in the first phase. A full-fledged roll out was allowed after completing the certain compliant requirements.
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