The Silicon Review ^Asia

India, with its massive population of over 1.3 billion people presents a huge market for internet-based mobile services. Mobile payments are a major sector that has numerous Indian as well as global competitors vying for a larger piece of the market. Amazon Pay, Google Pay, Paytm, PhonePay are amongst the biggest competitors for the mobile payments industry, with homegrown Paytm being the most popular. However, the race for payments could get a lot more intense as WhatsApp prepares to launch its own payments feature in India.

With over 300 million active users, WhatsApp is immensely popular among the young as well as old in India. By releasing a payments method along with messaging, the Facebook subsidiary could make a major dent in the market shares of existing players in the country. As per government regulations, WhatsApp would have to show regulators that all the data they collect from all the payments has to be stored locally on servers based in India. WhatsApp is reportedly preparing for approval from the Reserve bank of India, which is India’s banking regulator. According to experts, the digital payments market in India is projected to grow to an astounding $1 trillion by 2023.

WhatsApp has already tested the pilot version of its payments feature in India with a limited release, the results of which were enough to threaten established players in the field.