Send Payments in India with WhatsApp

In India and I have WhatsApp Payment enabled for more than a year (if I remember it right). I guess I was one of their early beta tester.<p>While it is convenient to send money to another person using WhatsApp but I have used it only few times in more than a year or so having it, even though on an avg&#x27; I do atleast couple of transactions a day.<p>One of the big reason for me to use it so less is perhaps because among my contacts and with whom I have need to exchange money were not part of beta program, BUT STILL I think P2P transactions are overrated as a focus area.<p>Most of my transaction happens due to ecommerce (food delivery, online shopping and others such), offline buys (ex. grocery store payment using shopkeeper&#x27;s QR Code), transactions using bank app (Ex. for big ticket items like monthly rents, regular payments like electricity, credit card bills), and things like quick bank balance check which is super convenient using Payment Apps like GooglePay and others.<p>WhatsApp payment experience is very bare bones, it just focuses on casual transactions among ones contacts - not on deep and broad payment experience in different domains as one encounters in real life.<p>Famous last words perhaps: WhatsApp payment feature would be yet another payment mechanism in an already crowded space, it would not make much difference to us user&#x27;s life, UNLESS they focus on payment space very deeply and bring merchants, online commerce etc. into picture.

I am predicting that this will beat Google and paytm to take the first place (30% of market share). Whatsapp is insanely popular here in India.<p>Phones are sold here with features like &#x27;Runs Whatsapp&#x27;.<p>My grandmother doesn&#x27;t know to operate the android keyboard. She uses whatsapp. It&#x27;s that popular.

I did the first payment on WhatsApp during their early beta period, in Feb 2018 to be precise. It has taken a while to get to general availability. Even now, for some strange reason they are permitted to serve only 20m users. Their beta was 2m users and they blew through that very early.<p>The user experience was fantastic - easier than sending a camera pic or audio message. They had zero promotions during the beta period unlike everyone else who were offering tons of freebies, not just at initial launch but even till now. If this works (as I think it will) it will lay waste to the billions of dollars that GooglePay, PhonePe and Paytm threw around.<p>Wonder if that will make the others throw around more cash to retain users or if the market will switch to a more rational model where people are not being paid to pay.

Seems like after Facebook invested in Reliance, they got the government approval .

Should have done 3-4 years ago. Now there are at least 3 apps fighting for leadership in payments: PayTM, Google Pay and PhonePe. Will be hard for Whatsapp to break into.

Sending money to others in Whatsapp has the following issues<p>To send, you have to have a conversation going on in Whatsapp. That means adding that person to your contact list. This is problematic because, you deal with many unknown vendors over time. Using whatsapp to send payments would spam your contact list.<p>edit:<p>Also, this is using Unified Payments Interface (UPI). There are a lot of apps that have much better UI&#x2F;UX &amp; Value adds than WA. I use PayTM, in which, I scan a QR code with the UPI address, do the payment and be done with it. Very simple to use, no issue of confusion &#x2F; sending money to wrong person, No known privacy issues, etc.<p>Also, It&#x27;s not like a lot of people want to send money to their friends. Usually, it&#x27;s business transactions.<p>It could work for off bank micro loans, provided there is an app for tracking and charging interest, etc.

I guess they are aiming to be the indian WeChat

I looked up P2P payments in India, and found this TC article from April 2019, &quot;Amazon Pay launches peer-to-peer payments in India&quot;[1], according to which an April 2019 launch was already a &quot;late start&quot;:<p>&gt; Amazon is getting a late start, however, when it comes to P2P payments in India. Its rivals (Paytm, Google Pay and PhonePe) already support P2P, with Google Pay in the lead.<p>I wonder what differentiates this offering from WhatsApp? (I guess the majority of people already establish contact on WhatsApp?)<p>Also, given that India semi-recently blocked some entertainment apps on national security grounds (let&#x27;s assume the stated intent for the sake of the argument), I wonder if anyone in the Indian government is alarmed that U.S. megacorps hold IMO much more precious keys to the financial security of their 1.4B population?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;04&#x2F;29&#x2F;amazon-pay-launches-peer-to-peer-payments-in-india&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;04&#x2F;29&#x2F;amazon-pay-launches-peer-t...</a>

I made my first WhatsApp payment in August 2019, so reckon they rolled out for iOS much sooner.<p>While WhatsApp has done a brilliant job rolling this out, my only grievance is the WhatsApp UPI ID they have given. Mine’s something like <i>91xxxx.wa.efo@bankname</i>. Life would be a lot easier if we get something like <i>91xxx@whatsapp</i>. That would also enable me to pay directly via WA while shopping on Amazon&#x2F; Flipkart. Currently, I depend on PhonePe and PayTM to complete my online transactions using UPI. I understand the characters succeeding @ is mostly a bank name offering UPI platform but even taking that into consideration, a username like 91xxx.wa@bankname would be much more convenient.<p>PS - I know “wa” in my username stands for WhatsApp but have no idea about “efo”. If someone would kindly proffer a suggestion.

We need separation of cash &amp; comms.

The my should enable this in Canada.<p>No Venmo or Square Cash here.<p>It’s funny since Square does Cash App dev in Toronto: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jobs.smartrecruiters.com&#x2F;Square&#x2F;743999717607379-senior-software-engineer-commerce-cash-app" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jobs.smartrecruiters.com&#x2F;Square&#x2F;743999717607379-seni...</a><p>“Email Money Transfers” kinda work, but I can see a tech-forward alternative eating up 80-90% of that business. And I don’t think they plan on international business.<p>And as a “rich” country with a ton of immigrants, we probably have the most international remittances per capita.

Can you please provide encrypted backups first ? It&#x27;s ridiculous to have no way of transferrig your data other than unencrypted Google Drive backups...

I expect the support to be pathetic. I have had a transaction from April this year that is still stuck in processing... with no sign of refund.

And just like that Facebook just captured the market share considering the gigantic Whatsapp users in India.<p>Building features like splitwise, group payments etc would make them unbeatable in near future.<p>But the part that scares me the most are the various SCAMS that can take place, considering we&#x27;re already dealing with UPI based payments scams which are happening round the clock.

They(RBI &amp; Govt of India) rather work on leaner AndroidOS (LineageOS + microG) and BhIM[1] like Apps for popular smartphones sold across India.<p>Don&#x27;t privatise charity &amp; security; humanise it.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;BHIM#Security" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;BHIM#Security</a>

Many countries now have phone number based payment systems (e.g. Siirto and MobilePay in Finland). So maybe it is a time for universal system?

Time to uninstall the app on my mom&#x27;s phone.

While this is a great step towards bringing new users into the UPI ecosystem, it would also lead to rampant UPI scams to a lot of unsuspecting users - the most common being asking for an OTP to receive money - facilitated by the very ease WhatsApp provides. It&#x27;s all too depressing the way majority of WhatsApp users will forward literally any message, though WhatsApp could do a better job of listing the origin of the message than just a `Forwarded` label.

Why is P2P more successful in India than in Africa (eg. South Africa)? Serious question and TIA for anyone with insight.

I fear for more olx scams, whatsapp and upi payment will be heaven for scammer.

If this move is successful, it could also open the door for Facebook Libra.