WhatsApp will launch a payment function in India by the end of this year with more than 400 million users

WhatsApp, the messaging service owned by Facebook, has confirmed that it has amassed more than 400 million users in India, media reports said, highlighting its huge influence in its biggest market. Such a huge number of users suggests that WhatsApp still dominates the Indian market despite fierce competition from WeChat and Line.

The platform has seen more than 1 million deals since WhatsApp began testing mobile payment services in India in February 2018, according to a source at India’s State Payments Corporation. The National Payments Corporation of India is an alliance of all payment and settlement services in the region. The success of WhatsApp’s mobile payment service in the Indian market is based on the popularity of UPI payment systems, where users can make transfers between bank accounts directly in the WhatsApp app.

Most recently, a WhatsApp spokesman confirmed that the platform has over 400 million monthly active users in India.

The unusual announcement comes more than two years after WhatsApp said it had 200 million users in India. During that time, WhatsApp and Facebook never Shared any information about the number of users in India.

India mobile payment market potential is tremendous, the area of more than 1 billion mobile phone users, a large number of users from the feature phone upgrade for smart phones, with the popularity of mobile Internet, mobile payment will become a mass market change service, credit suisse said in a report published in 2023 India mobile payment market will grow to $1 million.



Analysts say the public disclosure of the data should help Facebook reaffirm its dominance in India. In India, almost all smartphone users use WhatsApp. India has about 450 million smartphone users, according to MarketResearch affiliate Counterpoint.

As WhatsApp becomes ubiquitous in India, the service is increasingly meeting different needs. Businesses like social business apps like Meesho, for example, are built on WhatsApp. Facebook recently backed Meesho, its first such investment in an Indian start-up. Of course, WhatsApp is also in trouble for spreading false information in India.

Facebook’s dominance in India has come under attack in recent months as companies such as China’s Byte Beat expand their operations. China’s bytedance TikTok has amassed 120 million users in India and is seen by many as Facebook’s top competitor.

When Facebook actively promote WhatsApp the popularization of mobile payment service market in India, is also facing many rivals, including Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook, alibaba and other technology giants are ambitious for India market, the giant of science and technology, only the apple in the mobile payment market in India, mainly because of the iPhone in the Indian city of rate is smaller.

But no company’s mobile payment service can be profitable in the Indian market, more through mobile payment services to obtain more user data, accurately promote other core services to users.



A WhatsApp spokesman said India remained WhatsApp’s largest market. In 2017, Facebook said WhatsApp had about 250 million users in India. This figure has not been updated since then.

WhatsApp, which has about 1.5 billion monthly active users worldwide, doesn’t really have any major competitors in India.

Its closest competitors are Messenger, another platform owned by Facebook, and Hike, which is viewed by millions of users every day. In addition, Times Internet, an Indian Internet group that runs several news organizations and entertainment services, claims 450 million users in India.

At a news conference, WhatsApp’s global CEO said the company also plans to offer WhatsApp Pay to all WhatsApp users by the end of the year.

There is no doubt that this will present a serious challenge to Google payments (Google Pay), Flipkart’s PhonePe and Paytm. For Facebook, the success of WhatsApp Pay is even more crucial, as the company has no plans to offer libra, an encrypted currency, to India.