Facebook may roll out WhatsApp Pay in 6 months in few countries

It is expected that Facebook may launch its WhatsApp Pay in few countries in next six months. It is to be noted that its payment licence remains stuck in India.

Presently, the social media company is constructing is infrastructure to convert its private messaging apps, WhatsApp and Messenger, into private social platforms where users can hang out and engage with businesses. “One example that we've been working on is WhatsApp Payments where you're going to be able to send money as quickly and easily as sending a photo,” said Mark Zuckerberg on an earnings conference call with analysts, while talking about the growth of commerce and payments on private messaging apps.

“I'm really excited about this, and I expect this to start rolling out in a number of countries and for us to make a lot of progress here in the next six months,” he said.

WhatsApp Pay is designed to run on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) — developed by the National Payments Corporation of India. UPI allows users to pay others or do business transactions through their bank accounts. Facebook has to to complete localising all the data within India to get its licence approved. In the country, WhatsApp has around 400 million users.

The payment feature is currently running in pilot mode. If the company gets a payment licence for a full-fledged roll out, other players in the market, including Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm will face stiff competition.

Zuckerberg said commerce and payments are areas that will be important for private social platforms such as WhatsApp and Messenger, as well as social networking sites Facebook and Instagram. Beyond WhatsApp Payments, Zuckerberg said the company is working on several other efforts to help facilitate more commerce from Facebook Marketplace to Instagram Shopping. “We’re taking a number of different approaches here, ranging from people buying and selling to each other directly to businesses setting up storefronts, to people engaging with businesses directly through messaging and a number of things on payments --using existing national systems like India's UPI to creating new global systems,” he said.