NEW DELHI: WhatsApp Pay on Wednesday announced it is now live with State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank for its up to 20 million users in India. After two years of waiting, Facebook-owned WhatsApp payment service received approval from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in November to go live on Unified Payment Interface (UPI) with over 160 supported banks. WhatsApp can expand its UPI user base in a graded manner starting with a maximum registered user base of 20 million. The peer-to-peer (P2P) payment feature is available now in 10 Indian regional language versions of WhatsApp. According to a latest report by Bengaluru-based research firm RedSeer, digital payments in India are expected to reach $94 trillion by the financial year 2025. In India, the WhatsApp payment service competes against major players like Paytm, Google Pay and PhonePe, among others.
