WhatsApp has to follow all UPI guidelines for payments launch: NPCI

The National PaymentsCorporation of India (NPCI), the umbrella body for all digital payments in the country and the one which manages the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) protocol, said that every participating organisation has to follow well-defined UPI guidelines and stick to the aim of making the platform interoperable. It said that it should also offer multiple payment choices to the user thereby promoting digital payments.


In the context of the entire debate around digital payments company Paytmaccusing NPCI of giving out-of-turn favours to the Facebook-owned messaging platform Whatsapp, the bank-owned payments body has said, "NPCI has given its consent to roll out WhatsApp BHIM UPI beta launch with limited user base of 1 million and low per transaction limit. Four banks will join the multi-bank BHIM UPI model in phases (in the coming weeks) and full-feature product shall be released after the beta test is successful. Multi-bank model offer advantages such as transaction load distribution between banks and helps to integrate popular apps easily with BHIM UPI."

WhatsApp UPI payment feature: What you still can’t do

After months of testing, WhatsApp has finally made a big leap in the Indian online transaction scenario by launching its UPI-based payments feature. The instant messenger, which has over a billion monthly active users, now lets you transfer money directly to another person’s bank account. It has joined hands with several Indian banks for this platform to run and is still rolling it out to users. However, transferring money is the only feature it has for now. We have listed some of the features that we would love to see coming as a part of payments features. Here they are

Further the body said that apps will be enabled for full scale public launch only when they incorporate interoperability, generate BharatQR codes and have both intent and collect payment options.

This statement from NPCI comes in the wake of Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma saying, “Facebook is openly colonizing our payment system and is customizing UPI to their benefit. UPI was built as an India Stack; now some American monopoly arm-twists UPI for customer implementation,”

He had planned to take the issue to NPCI, and higher authorities as well.

Though it created a huge furore on social media circles, it also managed to get top entrepreneurs of the country stating publicly that incumbents could have been spooked by the entry of Whatsapp with its 250 million user base into the Indian payment scene. Further people who managed to get their hands on the WhatsApp Payments feature also spoke about the excellent payment experience and also the great user interface that the country's largest messaging platform had built.