WhatsApp Coming Up With Payment Features, Are Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay At Risk?

After a long wait, the Facebook-owned WhatsApp requested the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in 2018 seeking approval to offer digital payments services to WhatsApp users in India. As National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has already given permission, more than 400 million WhatsApp users in the country would soon be able to make payments through WhatsApp. But, what would the future of payment apps like Paytm, PhonePe, Amazon Pay, Google Pay and others, once WhatsApp comes up with its payment feature?

How To Use WhatsApp Pay—

If there’s ‘Payments’ option in the ‘Settings’ of WhatsApp in the device being used, it can be linked with the bank account via the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). The authentication can be done through registered mobile number with bank via SMS. After the authentication process is over, payments can be made and received from other users. Along with this, online shopping, mobile bills, prepaid recharge or splitting all could be done using WhatsApp.

Moreover, Paytm is the most popular digital payments apps in India with about 250 million users. According to last year’s data, PhonePe has around 170 million users while Google Pay has more than 67 million users in India.

WhatsApp And Its Reach-

However, it is a widely acknowledged that WhatsApp serves as default messaging app for a large demography in India. Its userbase is as huge as of the 400 million in the country. With such a large base, WhatsApp appears to be exceeding among the payment platforms as well.

The usage of WhatsApp as a single app for both- payment and messaging- appears viable because it will curtail hurdles and shorten steps. Using Paytm, PhonePe, Amazon Pay, Google Pay and others puts extra burden of keeping additional apps for payment process but in the case of WhatsApp, it is set to come up with both the facilities.