WhatsApp could enter the peer-to-peer payments (micro payments between users) in the India before the end of the year 2017. This is the information published by the India News website The Ken which, moreover, points out that WhatsApp will use a system that is supported by the Government of the country called Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to allow users to send money through the application.
The advent of peer-to-peer payments to WhatsApp is a rumor circulating since a long time ago. Brian Acton, co-founder of the application, in fact, declared last February during a trip to India that WhatsApp was “in the early stages” of investigating that service. Meanwhile, the owner of WhatsApp, Facebook, already launched the person to person payments your Messenger application in for United States in 2015.
Although from WhatsApp has not confirmed nor nor denied this information, it seems quite likely that person-to-person payments are released within a short time. David Marcus, the former President of PayPal who now works as a Vice President of messaging products on Facebook, spoke about the potential scheme payments Facebook in an interview in Wired in 2015. Marcus said that this not only could be used for payments peer-to-peer, but also among consumers and businesses contactless payments.
Payments margins are not as high, and we want the wider scope. The companies want to pay to be submitted or promoted, which is a big opportunity for us, said Marcus.
Thus, it is likely WhatsApp to follow a similar path. We know that you want to count the companies on its platform significantly, and the construction of the base for integrated payments will open a new avenue for the monetization of the service. Remains to be seen if this process will finally start this year and in India, although it seems that we will not have to wait too long to find out.
