WhatsApp Pay to get several India-first features, including cashbacks, in the next six months

• WhatsApp Pay is looking to accelerate its growth in India.
• The company is planning to invest a significant amount for its growth in India.
• It will introduce several India-first features to attract more customers to its payment service.

WhatsApp Pay has been looking to take on its competitors in India, Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm, head on given its large user base in the country. However, currently the company is facing a market cap of only 20million users in the country from the regulator National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

Although NPCI has increased the cap to 40 million users, it only amounts to 8% of WhatsApp’s total user-base in the country, claimed to be 500 million. On the other hand, its competitors PhonePe and Google Pay have a market share of 46% and 34% respectively, and WhatsApp Pay amounts to less than 1% of the market share.

India-first approach

To take on its competitors, Meta-owned WhatsApp is looking to make significant investments on its payment services in India to speed up its growth. In its India-centric approach, a large part of the investment is likely to go into cashback offerings to users on making transactions through its platforms. Recently, it was discovered that WhatsApp was offering ₹51 cashback for the first five transactions done by its users.

Luring customers through cashbacks also helped the likes of Google Pay and PhonePe grow in India. Apart from the cashback, WhatsApp has also introduced the ₹ symbol in its chats for payments. Even the camera icon in the chat composer allows users to scan any QR codes.

According to Manesh Mahatme, WhatsApp India director-payments, the company has planned significant investments in WhatsApp Pay across India that will include several India-first features to accelerate the growth.

Less trust

According to a report in TechRadar, WhatsApp will find it hard to win against the likes of Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm due to its perception. A fintech-analyst claims that according to their research people are less trusting of WhatsApp with financial transactions.

So another focus of the heavy investment in India would be on improving its image and sowing trust among its users to use WhatsApp Pay for transactions.

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