The facebook-owned company, WhatsApp’s digital payment platform, has finally got government approval. On 6th February, the National Payments Corporation of India approved the license for WhatsApp for digitized payment service. WhatsApp applied for the facility of digital payment long back, but due to the several ignoring rules, the approval got declined. The company was already licensed for WhatsApp Pay by RBI. WhatsApp head Will Cathcart visited India last year. During the visit, he stated that the company had completed preparations for WhatsApp Pay.
Presently, due to some technical reasons, the National Payments Corporation of India has asked WhatsApp to provide this facility to one crore users only. Since WhatsApp users are the highest in India, the company will get its full benefit. After launching WhatsApp Pay for one crore users, the company will complete the remaining process for the license. Moreover, after getting a permit, permission will be granted to all WhatsApp users in India.
After rolling out payment service to all the users, it will become the largest digital payment platform in the country. WhatsApp has more than 400 million users in India. WhatsApp launched a digital payment facility for 10 lakh users in association with ICICI Bank in February 2018. Now, as WhatsApp has now got support for digital payment services, it has directly become rival to Google Pay, Amazon Pay, and Paytm. This is the reason why the CEO of Paytm was continuously criticizing WhatsApp Pay last year.
Data Localization : Reason For Delay
However, the company has since been waiting for regulatory approval. Data localization norms were the main reason for the delay in the launch of WhatsApp pay. The government of India had expressed concern about the data security and privacy of this service. The government wanted all the data of the users should get stored in the country itself. These norms were the significant reason that due to which this didn’t get approval. Now the company has ensured the NPCI that WhatsApp will follow the local data regulation.
