Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has expressed optimism about the much-awaited launch of Whatsapp payment service in India soon. During a third-quarter earnings call, Zuckerberg addressed the question on payments ecosystem by Facebook saying that the company’s tests, presently running in India, has shown a positive response from several people supporting the WhatsApp payments service.
WhatsApp Pay, along with a million users, had been in the beta mode in India for over 1.5 years, awaiting the Reserve Bank of India’s approval. The delay has been a result of India’s local data storage requirements, as reported.
WhatsApp versus Court
In August, the Supreme Court has asked the RBI to examine WhatsApp Pay for six weeks and report whether the platform has fulfilled its data localization requirements. The Facebook-owned company also asked the government to clarify, within the given period of six weeks, its status whether the firm’s grievance officer should be India based. The National Payment Corporation of India chief Dilip Asbe, however, stated that it would take the social media messaging platform at least two more months to comply with India’s data localization norms.
Earlier, WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart said that the firm had put in tremendous efforts to comply with the data localization requirements and was ensuring to do it in a way that builds on top of the system in India has set up with UPI and bank partners that they are working with.
Amazon Pay, Paytm, Google Pay, and PhonePe have already been battling to win customers in the market, which is expected to grow to $ 1 trillion by 2023. In the meantime, Facebook has reported high sales and growth in the Q3 end. WhatsApp’s daily active userbase has touched 1.62 billion, up by 9%, led by growth in India, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
Last year, the government had filed a petition demanding the linking of social media platforms with Aadhaar cards in the Madras High Court. The court has extended the case’s realm to include tracing the origin of ‘objectionable’ messages on WhatsApp, such as fake news.
