Facebook’s WhatsApp Moving Quickly to Capture India Digital Payments Market Share

whatsapp digital payments india

Facebook has long been playing hide and seek with the WhatsApp monetization question. But we all know that it was always a question of “when” and not “whether”. Recently, however, Truecaller may have pushed Facebook into a corner by announcing their intention to become a platform with a digital payments option instead of just being an app that keeps pesky callers at bay.

The region under the new emerging fight between Truecaller and WhatsApp in the digital payments world is India, where WhatsApp is the number one mobile messaging app with more than 160 million users, followed by Truecaller with more than 130 million users. India is a huge market for both these players, and with Internet penetration still at less than half of india’s more than billion populus, the country holds enormous potential today as well as in the future.

According to a Reuters report published a few hours ago, WhatsApp planning to launch a digital payment service in India, and the reason for the speculation is that they have advertised to hire a digital transactions lead in the country.

You can see WhatsApp’s job posting for Digital Transactions Lead here.

Responsibilities

  • Provide friendly and efficient customer support to WhatsApp users in India with inquiries related to digital transactions
  • Troubleshoot user issues and escalate issues to developers and other cross-functional partners
  • Be an advocate for the users of our digital transactions service to the rest of the company
  • Proactively construct workflows to allow for more efficient ticket processing
  • Collaborate with banks to resolve WhatsApp user issues
  • Use analytical tools to track data in meaningful reports
  • Work cross-functionally with other teams supporting digital transactions on WhatsApp
  • Project manage a small team of contractors providing off-hours support
  • Help scale global support for digital transactions on WhatsApp

The job requires prior experience in working in the financial services market in India, and also the ability to understand the Indian government’s digital payment services BHIM, UPI and the world’s largest biometric identification database, AADHAR, a 12-digit unique identification number issued by the Indian government to Indian residents.

It can’t get clearer than this. Facebook has decided to take the plunge into the digital payments market, and India may be the first country to get a taste of the digital payments service by WhatsApp.

It’s still early days, and things always go wrong in the tech world, but the digital payments market in India is closing fast. There are several players in this segment, including the Indian government, which launched BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) and UPI (Unified Payments Interface, which WhatsApp has picked as the mobile wallet for their service) to help accelerate the growth of digital payments.

Jio, one of India’s mobile carriers, has launched a digital payment service of its own, and has one of the fastest growing user bases in the country. “Reliance Jio’s total subscriber base has crossed the 100 million mark within 170 days of the service’s launch.” – NDTV

If WhatsApp waits too long, the Indian market would be long gone, which could be the reason for the sudden surge in activity without a formal announcement of any sort either from Facebook or its subsidiary, WhatsApp.

Thanks for reading our work! If you enjoyed it or found value, please share it using the social media share buttons on this page. If you have something to tell us, there’s a comments section right below, or you can contact@1redDrop.com us.

Source