WhatsApp betting big on rural India with its UPI feature

It recently revealed a pilot programme to adopt 500 villages in Maharashtra and Karnataka to familiarise locals with different aspects of digital payments, including how to register for UPI, how to set up a UPI account, and how to utilise digital payments securely.

At present, UPI has over 100 million active users who transact on the platform.

According to a top WhatsApp official, there will be a segment of tech-savvy urban users who, he hoped, would gradually opt for the WhatsApp experience. The app will invest in rural, new-to-digital individuals that count about 300 million.

Last month, India's flagship payments processor, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), permitted WhatsApp to double the number of users on its payments service to 40 million, which is still less than one-tenth of the firm's 400 million-plus user base in India.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, views payments as the final step in Facebook's commerce strategy, which starts with advertising-driven product discovery and concludes with purchase -- all within Meta's family of apps.

However, owing to delay in regulatory approvals, India's enthusiasm for WhatsApp Pay has not converted into numbers.

WhatsApp Pay has a market share of less than 1 percent in UPI transactions, compared to 46 percent for market leader PhonePe and 35 percent for Google Pay.

According to WhatsApp, it is not concerned about the regulatory cap, and was happy that NPCI raised the limit on its payment feature after noticing new features that have made UPI easy to use for both urban and rural users.

In November, UPI processed 4.187 billion transactions worth Rs 7,68,436.11 crore.