Athira Sethu
Kochi, 2 January 2025
WhatsApp Pay, the payment facility of the highly popular messaging application, has gotten the nod for expansion of services to all the users in India. The NPCI has removed the cap on how many people are allowed to use WhatsApp Pay; thus, allowing the app to serve over 500 million users in the country.
Initially, NPCI was highly conservative about allowing many users onboard while WhatsApp Pay had first launched its service. The intention behind doing this was so that it was in a position to cope up with the vast scale demand of digital payments within the Indian country line. However, NPCI could keep WhatsApp Pay open for very few users during its launch. The limit was raised gradually over time as the service proved its ability to handle payments safely. In November 2022, the cap was raised to 100 million users.
With the cap now removed, WhatsApp Pay can extend its services to all its users in India. The move comes after NPCI deemed that WhatsApp Pay had fulfilled all requirements of security, operational, and compliance requirements. It is part of India’s push for a cashless economy through the promotion of digital payments.
Despite the lift of the user cap, WhatsApp Pay will still follow all the current rules and guidelines that are available for third-party payment apps, such as following security measures and the UPI guidelines.
It will most likely disrupt India’s payment market, which at present is dominated by apps including PhonePe, Google Pay, and Paytm. With 500 million users in India, WhatsApp has the potential to dethrone these companies in market share for digital payments.
The NPCI has extended the date for UPI service providers further and also obliged the regulation to make sure no app can carry more than 30% of the total UPI transactions. This regulation has been in effect since 2021, but since the current extension of the date is up till December 2026, the apps such as PhonePe and Google Pay with more than 30% will now get sufficient time to comply with the new guidelines.
