WhatsApp Will Offer Credit Card Payment And Competitor Service In Its Application In India

Whatsapp Pay in India will receive credit card payments. (photo: dock. pexels)

JAKARTA - WhatsApp will offer payments with credit cards and services from competing digital payment providers in its app in India. This is the latest attempt by Meta Platform Inc.'s services to increase trading offerings in its largest market.

WhatsApp has more than 500 million users in India, although regulators there have restricted WhatsApp Pay services in apps to just 100 million people. People shopping on WhatsApp can also pay for using popular services such as Alphabet Inc's Google Pay, Paytm, and Walmart's PhonePe but only after being directed out of WhatsApp.

"Payments through these competing services - and others using India's UPI instant money transfer system - will now be made possible directly in WhatsApp," Meta said in a blog post. New options for credit and debit cards will also be offered.

This addition reinforces Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's plans to make business messages the "next-to-leading leader" of the company's sales growth. This is an increasingly pressing agenda as the Meta core advertising business and metaverse projects have come under pressure.

According to a Meta spokesperson, although WhatsApp Pay users will remain limited in India, there is no limit on the number of users allowed to make transactions with businesses on WhatsApp using other methods.

With about 300 million people spending about 180 billion US dollars (IDR 2,762.7 trillion) through India's UPI every month, this new transaction option could be a strong attraction to invite the Meta payment business to access WhatsApp users.

To date, WhatsApp has limited its end-to-end shopping experience in India on experimental programs such as JioMart's online grocery service, run by India's richest man, Mukesh billionaire Ambani, and the metro system in the cities of Chennai and Bangaluru.

Going forward, new payment tools will be available to every company in India that uses WhatsApp's business platform, which generally serves large companies, according to the blog post.

Meta is also expanding its Meta Verified subscription program to businesses around the world, providing companies with a mechanism to validate authenticity and improve its content on user feed, said a separate blog post.