WhatsApp Pay- How to operate this Innovative Payment Service ?

On 5th Nov. 20, WhatsApp rolled out its innovative, chat based, payments services,‘WhatsApp Pay’ in India on UPI platform of NPCI  that enables transactions with over 160 supported banks/mobile wallet operators. With this, it is slated to give a tough competition to existing players like Paytm, Google Pay, Walmart-owned PhonePe and Amazon Pay.

However, even with a 400-million user base in the country, WhatsApp Pay will only be rolled out to 20 million WhatsApp users. That's because NPCI has said that a 30% cap will be implemented on total payment volumes via every third party payments app from January 1, 2021.

Currently, it is working with five banks in India - ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, the State Bank of India, and Jio Payments Bank - and people can send money on WhatsApp to anyone using a UPI supported app.

To send money on WhatsApp in the country, it’s important to have a bank account and debit card in India. The Facebook-owned messaging app will send instructions to banks, also known as payment service providers, that will initiate the transfer of money via UPI between sender and receiver bank accounts.

With this, WhatsApp users can send money to anyone using a UPI supported app.While using WhatsApp for payments, one needs to enter a personal UPI PIN for each transaction.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to enable, send or receive money via WhatsApp Pay:

1) Click on the WhatsApp app on your mobile phone and select the three-dotted icon visible on the top right corner of your screen.

2) Select 'Payments', then 'Add payment method'

3) A list of bank names will be on your screen.

4) After you finish selecting your bank name, your cell number, which is linked with the bank, will be verified.

5) For verification, a user needs to select 'Verify' via SMS.

Note: You need to make sure the WhatsApp number is the same as the one linked to your bank a/c.

6) Once you're done with the verification process, a user then needs to complete setting up payments.

7) A UPI Pin is mandatory for carrying out transactions on WhatsApp similar to how it's on other apps.

8) Following this, you can see the chosen bank on the payments page.

If user wants to send or receive money :

1) Open any chat on WhatsApp and select the 'attachment' icon.

2) Click on 'Payment' and add the money you want to send to the person. A user can also add a note.

3) To finish the payment process on WhatsApp, you will have to enter your UPI PIN.

4) After you finish you transaction, you will get a confirmation message.

Payments on WhatsApp is now available for users on the latest version of the iPhone and Android app.

Here are key things to know about the WhatsApp payment service:

1.    Payments (service) on WhatsApp is available for people on the latest version of the iPhone and Android app. However, it is being rolled out in a phased manner, starting with a maximum registered user base of 20 million in UPI. So, some users may not be available to use WhatsApp immediately.

2.    WhatsApp Pay is free and users won’t be charged a transaction fee. However, the limit for a transaction on WhatsApp’s payment service is Rs 1 lakh.

3.    To use WhatsApp payment, one must have an Indian number and Indian bank account. People using international numbers will not be able to use WhatsApp’s payment service.

4.    The payment service will be currently available in 10 Indian language versions of WhatsApp.

5.    These payments, as said by WhatsApp, is designed with a strong set of security and privacy principles, including entering a personal UPI PIN for each payment.

So, it is completely secured.

Registering less than 1% of the total UPI transactions in the month of November 2020, it is indeed a slow start for WhatsApp Pay. As per a report shared by the ET Telecom, WhatsApp Pay saw over 20 million transactions last month.To get a perspective of how small this number is, the overall market saw a total of 2.2 billion UPI transactions in November 2020. Compared to October’s 2.1 billion total transactions, it is a growth of 7% for total UPI transactions in the country.

A thing worth noting here is that WhatsApp Pay currently allows only peer-to-peer (P2P ) payments. The peer-to-merchant (P2M) payments haven’t been allowed until now. WhatsApp has over 400 million monthly active users in the country, so there is no denying that this number will increase as time passes by.