WhatsApp payments service on hold as the platform awaits government's approval

Facebook-owned WhatsApp is said to be working on the launch of its payment service in India. The company is currently waiting for the green light from the Indian authorities so that it will roll out the service for its Indian users. WhatsApp had been testing this new payment feature for quite a time now and the testing phase seems to be completed.

Challenges to WhatsApp payment service

It seems that WhatsApp has been engaged with the Indian government NPCI (National Corporation of India) for the approval of the service. But Indian government seems to be little dicey about the payment service. The government want WhatsApp to focus more on curbing fake news citing numerous lynching incidents happening across India. The messaging app also added the forwarded tag for the viral messages for the transparency of the source of messages.

However, the Indian government want WhatsApp to come up with more precise measures and prioritize it over the plan to launch this new payment service. But the primary concern is how and where WhatsApp's payment service will store the data of users in accordance with RBI's instruction.
Indian user base is huge, there are over 200 million users in India and storing such big data carelessly will be a major loss.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT also asked NPCI to check whether WhatsApp's payments service is following RBI's norms and offers data security to its users. In return, WhatsApp has assured all the sensitive data such as last 6 digits number of a debit or a credit card and UPI PIN will not be stored by the service. The company has also made it clear that payment information won't be used by the parent company Facebook.

Facebook's Chief, Mark Zuckerberg said that WhatsApp "gives people a really simple way to send money to each other and contribute to greater financial inclusion."

"All signs point to a lot of people wanting to use this when the government gives us the green light. And in the meantime, we've broadened our focus to building this for other countries so we can give more people this ability faster," Zuckerberg added further.

Why WhatsApp payment service?

There is already too many UPI service app available in India like Tez, Phone Pe, Bhim, Paytm and more. We have already so many apps that it is very difficult to use them. Now, this WhatsApp payment service will add to the list. Although this is not a separate app, however, it works similar to other apps.

Facebook has already been into so many controversies in the last couple of months. Selling users personal details and other scams, how can we trust the app which works under the same umbrella. Security is the major concern in this case. Let's see when the Indian government will give the green signal to the payment service.