Whatsapp will make significant investments regarding digital payments on its platform across the country

WhatsApp India announced on Tuesday that it will make large investments in digital payments on its platform across the country over the next six months in order to accelerate its growth in a market where usage of universal payments interface (UPI)-based payments has expanded.

According to Manesh Mahatme, Director-Payments, WhatsApp India, as people across the country accept ‘payments on WhatsApp,’ the business looks forward to collaborating with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to further expand it to all users.

“We congratulate the NPCI for raising our ceiling to 40 million (from an initial cap of 20 million). Since our original NPCI approval, we have been working to provide a simple, reliable, and safe experience for WhatsApp users, with the intention of accelerating UPI adoption for the “next five hundred million” Indians “, According to a statement issued by Mahatme.

The NPCI approved expanding the user cap for WhatsApp’s payment service from 20 million to 40 million users last week.

According to Mahatme, the Meta-owned company has recently added various India-specific features in WhatsApp payments, with promising results.

“Over the next six months, we intend significant investments in payments on WhatsApp across India, including many more “India-first” innovations that we are confident will drive our growth,” he said.

He believes that UPI has the potential to have an even greater influence on the country, particularly in rural areas where digital and financial inclusion may considerably enhance people’s lives.

“We believe WhatsApp Pay can be a crucial partner to the NPCI and RBI as we all aspire to scale adoption of UPI and financial inclusion to people who need it the most,” a top company executive said.

According to the most recent NPCI data, India recorded a massive Rs 7.7 lakh crore (over $100 billion in value) in digital transactions via UPI in October for the first time.

Digital payments saw 4.2 billion UPI transactions in total during the month of October, which saw record festive spending across e-commerce platforms.

The NPCI recorded digital payments of Rs 6.54 lakh crore via 3.65 billion UPI transactions in September.

PhonePe is currently the country’s top in the digital payments space. PhonePe recorded Rs 3.06 lakh crore in digital transactions.

PhonePe has about 325 million registered users at the moment. In addition, the platform is accepted at over 22 million merchant outlets in India.