After NPCI nod, WhatsApp Pay set for a first come, first served plan

With over 1 million customers already under its belt during the beta testing phase, WhatsApp Pay will follow a first come, first served policy while limiting its subscriber base to 20 million, according to sources. 

The National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) gave permission to WhatsApp to go live on Thursday, but only with a registered customer base of 20 million in the beginning. Analysts believe the graded rollout would be a concern for the Facebook-owned firm.

With a subscriber base of 400 million, WhatsApp has been gearing up to challenge players such as Phone Pe and Google Pay, which currently dominate the UPI-led transactions market with a 40 per cent share. It was aiming to use this strength in integrating its payment platform with Jio Mart’s e-commerce venture. The idea was to make the process of payments and ordering seamless for buyers and kirana stores, sources said. 

But by restricting the number of users to 5 per cent of the total WhatsApp users, the number of users with a payment wallet (irrespective of whether they use it or not) will come to only a third of Phone Pe’s transacting users in May, according to estimates. It would be a mere 30 per cent of the Google Pay transacting users for the same month. Only about 11 per cent of the 177.8 million daily active WhatsApp users, based on Similar Web data, will have the companies payment platform.  That is close to the 15.3 million active daily Google Pay users and 12.6 million active Phone Pe daily users, who also use their respective payment wallets. But, there’s a difference when it comes to WhatsApp Pay. That is, everyone with a WhatApp Pay might not use it for making a transaction but for messaging, unlike in the case of competitors. 

A spokesperson of WhatsApp India, when asked to comment on the staggered permission, said: “We are excited in working together with the NPCI and all our partners to provide payments to people across India and we will continue to work with them to make it available to everyone over time.”

WhatsApp is working on the integration of its payment option with Jio Mart’s e-commerce platform. It could replicate a similar model in other segments too as it does not have an exclusive agreement with Reliance. But those in the know pointed out that WhatsApp’s initial priority is to stabilise the launch and then seek permission to increase the subscriber numbers. Jio Mart has over 10 million subscribers, and growing. 

It also has plans to integrate 30 million small retailers seamlessly through WhatsApp. As a WhatsApp company spokesperson said: “Our collaboration with Jio is based on enabling new opportunities for businesses of all sizes but especially for more than 60 million small businesses across the country.” To achieve this objective, it would require more universal use of the payments platform for WhatsApp users. With WhatsApp getting into payment, there are questions whether it could get into a super app league in the country. China’s WeChat had taken a similar route — it converted from a messaging to a payments platform and then switched to customer-facing services such as flight booking, car hailing, movie tickets, utilities, all without leaving the app. 

Analysts point at the massive customer base of WeChat, covering over 83 per cent of the Chinese population. WhatsApp in India is far away from that kind of a domination. The NPCI condition of capping UPI transactions at 30 per cent for each player would ensure there’s no WeChat like monopoly in the Indian market, at least for now.