It was reported not too long ago that WhatsApp could offer digital payments functionality to users in India as early as February. The Facebook-owned service is said to be working on integrating India’s Unified Payment Interface. New screenshots have surfaced online which partly reveal what the WhatsApp Payments setup process is going to look like.
The Unified Payment Interface is a platform backed by the country’s government which lets developers quickly integrate digital payments for local users into their apps. WhatsApp received the nod from India’s government to integrate with UPI in July 2017.
WhatsApp is going to join Google’s Tez app for India which is integrated with UPI to enable users to pay bills. Since WhatsApp happens to be very popular in the country, the integration with UPI is going to bring a significant chunk of the population into the digital payments space.
The screenshots reveal that this feature is going to be called WhatsApp Payments and that it will enable users to send and receive money securely with UPI. They will start by verifying their phone number before they select their bank. There will likely be additional steps to link the bank account and other verification requirements as well.
What this does show is that the feature has been developed to quite an extent and that reports which suggested that it might be launched in February could very well be true.