NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

By James Vincent 

Facebook is rolling out its WhatsApp payment service for users in India after receiving approval from the country’s regulators. The service first launched in India as a beta in 2018, but a full rollout was delayed for years by concerns about data storage and sharing. It’s an important launch for what is WhatsApp’s biggest market, home to some 400 million users.

India’s regulatory body for retail payments, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), gave its approval to WhatsApp on Thursday, with Facebook confirming the rollout of the service just hours later in a blog post. The news was significant enough for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to create a video (embedded below) explaining some of its features.

Photo courtesy of Betshy.