Whatsapp has announced its intention to launch its first payment service in India, competing with Google Pay and Amazon Pay.
The company, which owns the Facebook group, tested the service on more than one million people last year, but suspended its commercial launch, awaiting the approval of the regulator of the banking sector in India.
“The new payment service that is expected to be rolled out in other countries will make sending someone’s money to Whatsapp as easy as sending a message,” said Will Cathcart, the company’s global president.
“We are excited to offer this service to our users throughout India this year.” Thus, India is the first country to employ Whatsapp for its payment service, while the Indian authorities have not yet given their final approval. “This service is necessary to accelerate integration into the financial system and bring more people into the rapidly growing digital economy,” said Cathcart, according to Middle East Online. India is one of the fastest growing major economies in the world, with tens of millions of people using the Internet to conduct their financial transactions. You know it the new service will compete with Whatsapp as soon as it launches other digital payment services including Google Pay and Amazon Pay.
Whatsapp seeks to diversify its services and focus on services that generate money and increase its popularity.
Whatsapp has launched the new application called Whatsapp Business. The application aims to enable companies to promote their services to consumers. Small business owners will be able to use Whatsapp Business Edition and the regular version of it in two separate applications on the same smartphone. The new version is that it will allow the user to link his account to a fixed (land) phone number, so that the employer avoids giving his personal number to hundreds of customers. In order to know the difference between the normal Whatsapp account and the Whatsapp Business account, you only have to go to the profile of the person whose number you have, and the type of account you own will appear.
Whatsapp has warned against fraudulent accounts that may impersonate companies to defraud people, and warned users not to make a good guess before they can send an account.
The new service covers Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States, before being launched around the world.