WhatsApp gets NPCI nod to raise UPI user base to 100 million

Meta-owned WhatsApp has received regulatory approval to more than double the user base of its payments service in India. 

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has approved an additional 60 million users on UPI for WhatsApp. With the approval, the messaging app will be able to expand the service to its 100 million users in the country, NPCI said in a statement on Wednesday. 

The retail payments umbrella entity had in November 2020 allowed WhatsApp to go live on UPI in the multi-bank model. 

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At that time, the messaging app was allowed to expand its UPI user base in the country in a graded manner, starting with a maximum registered user base of 20 million. A year later, WhatsApp was permitted to double UPI users to 40 million. 

The meta-owned messaging app was running its UPI-based payment system WhatsApp Pay in beta mode since the year 2018, with one million users.  

One of the biggest handicaps for the platform continued to be RBI's data localisation rules for payment providers in India, which the platform had to adhere to.  

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In an affidavit filed by the central bank in the Supreme Court (SC) in 2020, NPCI had informed the RBI in June that it was satisfied with WhatsApp's compliance with the regulator's data storage norms and was ready to go live on the UPI platform. 

WhatsApp's payment service is still not available to a majority of its estimated user base of more than 400 million in the country.