The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has approved an extra 60 million users on the unified payments interface (UPI) for WhatsApp, in a big boost to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to penetrate the Indian digital payments sector. With this approval, WhatsApp will be permitted to expand its service to 100 million users in the country, out of a total of 400 million.
The NPCI approved raising the user cap for WhatsApp’s payment service from 20 million to 40 million users in November of last year.
The NPCI has been approving WhatsApp in stages in order to avoid suffocating competition in the digital payment industry, which is dominated by PhonePe, Google Pay, and Paytm. WhatsApp India has announced that it will spend heavily in digital payments on its platform across the country in order to accelerate its growth in a sector where UPI-based payment adoption has surged.
India’s online transactions, loans, and e-wallet services have been fast developing, thanks to a government campaign to encourage the country’s cash-loving merchants and consumers to switch to digital payments.
