Last year, WhatsApp teased its Indian market with a ‘WhatsApp Payments’ feature powered by India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI); a mobile payments processor. The person-to-person (P2P) payments feature lets users make payments right from the messaging platform.
It was eventually implemented and as of February was still being rolled out gradually to users in the region.
WhatsApp is now testing a new ‘Request Payments’ feature for WhatsApp Payments with select beta users of the platform in India.
According to a Telekomtalk report, this feature works exclusively with only UPI IDs and allows users send an amount specific request for money that expires after a 24-hour period.
In a report outlining possible avenues for profitability, new products were outlined as a major revenue stream and WhatsApp Payments seems to be the platform’s aggressive revenue stream.
Suggested read: WhatsApp will soon be profitable, be very afraid
As of February 2018, WhatsApp had 200 million Monthly Active Users (MAUs) from India that apparently make up a sizeable chunk of its 1.5 billion global MAUs. Because of the numbers and its popularity in the region, India is the perfect location to test a potential moneymaker like the WhatsApp Payments feature.
But with every new modification and addition to the product, WhatsApp Payments is certainly nearing a global rollout.
Nigeria may not be able to outrank India in the WhatsApp number game, but with its new improved mobile internet penetration numbers, there is a lot of promise for the payments platform.
Suggested read: Mobile internet subscriptions in Nigeria hit a 100.9 million high
A projective report in 2017 said when it eventually comes, WhatsApp payments will disrupt fintech in Nigeria and may just be the industry’s long awaited vehicle to greater adoption.
