WhatsApp Pay in 6 months, says Zuckerberg

BENGALURU: Facebook expects to roll out WhatsApp Pay in a number of countries in the next six months, even as its payment licence remains stuck in India.Facebook is working on building technology infrastructure to turn its private messaging apps, WhatsApp and Messenger, into private social platforms where users can hang out and engage with businesses. “One example that we've been working on is WhatsApp Payments where you're going to be able to send money as quickly and easily as sending a photo,” said Mark Zuckerberg on an earnings conference call with analysts, while talking about the growth of commerce and payments on private messaging apps.“I'm really excited about this, and I expect this to start rolling out in a number of countries and for us to make a lot of progress here in the next six months,” he said.WhatsApp’s payment feature, called WhatsApp Pay, is designed to run on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) — developed by the National Payments Corporation of India — which allows users to pay others or do business transactions through their bank accounts. Its licence has not been approved in India yet as it has to complete localising all the data within the country’s borders. WhatsApp has about 400 million users in India. The payment feature is currently running in pilot mode. If the company gets a payment licence for a full-fledged rollout, other players in the market, including Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm will face stiff competition. Zuckerberg said commerce and payments are areas that will be important for private social platforms such as WhatsApp and Messenger, as well as social networking sites Facebook and Instagram. Beyond WhatsApp Payments, Zuckerberg said the company is working on several other efforts to help facilitate more commerce from Facebook Marketplace to Instagram Shopping. “We’re taking a number of different approaches here, ranging from people buying and selling to each other directly to businesses setting up storefronts, to people engaging with businesses directly through messaging and a number of things on payments --using existing national systems like India's UPI to creating new global systems,” he said.Facebook beat Wall Street estimates in the quarter ended December but slowing profit growth dragged down share prices. Net income rose 7% year-over-year to $7.3 billion, compared to 61% growth over 2018.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/37KB0V9