After Waiting For Two Years, WhatsApp Pay Gets NPCI Nod To Go Live

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Thursday (November 5) gave approval for WhatsApp to ‘Go Live’ on UPI in the muti-bank model.

The payments authority said in a statement that the Facebook-owned messaging app can expand its UPI user base in a graded manner starting with a maximum registered user base of 20 Mn in UPI.

WhatsApp has been embroiled in a slew of lawsuits in the country over the past one year due to which it hasn’t been able to launch its payments feature beyond the beta mode.

NPCI’s clarification today comes after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) informed the Supreme Court in August that it hasn’t yet granted permission to WhatsApp to go live with its payments functionalities.

The central bank’s response to the apex court had come after NPCI had confirmed that WhatsApp Payments fulfilled the remaining three points on data-localisation norms for launching its payments service.

The Facebook-owned messaging app had informed the Supreme Court about its compliance in June. WhatsApp had also said that an independent third-party auditor certified by the central government’s cybersecurity firm CERT-in had confirmed WhatsApp Payments’ data localisation compliance. It also specified that it has spent a “significant engineering time and effort” over the last seven months to comply with the guidelines.