Today, mobile shopping is on the rise.
We now pay for goods and services using our phones more often than ever. For instance, we pay for services like taxi, booking movie tickets, purchasing products, groceries, ordering food, etc through different mobile apps.
So, to grab the share of mobile payment market, WhatsApp will soon introduce a peer-to-peer payments feature with mobile payment gateway integration.
According to a report from The Ken, WhatsApp plans to use UPI, a cross-bank payment system backed by the government, to enable payments through WhatsApp within next six months.
In a statement WhatsApp told that “India is an important country for WhatsApp, and we’re understanding how we can contribute more towards the vision of Digital India”.
It’s not a direct admission nor a denial, but the new peer-to-peer payment feature would make a lot of sense for the WhatsApp that claims to have over one billion active users worldwide.
Moreover, after adding payments to its Messenger app, integrating mobile payment gateway in WhatsApp to offer peer-to-peer payments makes much sense as it could be quite transformative for India, where Messenger is less popular.
In fact, on a visit to India in February, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton Admitted that they were in the early stages of looking into how they can incorporate payment services in their product.
In addition, WhatsApp said last year that it would explore the potential to provide “business that matter” to its users on its platform. Now, this feature was first scheduled to ship by the end of 2016, but it is yet to go live.
Whatsapp (Subsidiary of Facebook) announced recently, its new app launch – the WhatsApp Business app for small businesses. In September 2017, Whatsapp officially announced and tested this app with few businesses such as BookMyShow and MakeMyTrip in India.
On Wednesday, the new Whatsapp Business app for SMEs was released & is now live on Google Play Store. Currently, this app is available in Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, UK, and the USA. But, in upcoming weeks, it will be rolled out across the world. The Whatsapp Business app will also be accessible on Apple’s iOS platform.
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