The Facebook-owned messaging platform announced that its peer-to-peer payments service is now live in India.Insider Intelligence publishes hundreds of insights, charts, and forecasts on the Payments & Commerce industry with the Payments & Commerce Briefing.The Facebook-owned messaging platform announced that its peer-to-peer payments service is now live in India, per The News Minute.
. In March, the Competition Commission of India received a complaint against WhatsApp, alleging that the messaging platform—which is estimated to have 390.1 million users in India, making it WhatsApp's largest global market, per eMarketer forecasts —was abusing its market position by bundling its digital payment service within its platform. The complaint went on to suggest that WhatsApp's digital payment service would harm competition in India, prompting an investigation from the CCI.
The launch can be an opportunity for Facebook to cash in on India's flourishing digital payments space. India's noncash transaction volume grew 51% in 2019, making it the fastest-growing noncash market in the world, according to data from Capgemini. The country's ecommerce development in recent years—it was the second-fastest growing ecommerce market in the world in 2019—has likely aided the shift toward digital payments.
WhatsApp's payment service launch in India also aids Facebook's overall push into the payments space. The social networking giant has been striving to make its platforms more lucrative—it recently expanded Instagram's social commerce offerings and added more shopping tools within WhatsApp. But more importantly, it also introduced Facebook Pay, a payment system that aims to connect all of Facebook's platforms, including Instagram and WhatsApp.
Zuckerberg has bribed Modi.