Facebook-owned company WhatsApp has received the approval of National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) for the digital payment platform Whatsapp Pay. Although the company is offering digital payment facility to some users as a pilot project, but after getting the green signal from NPCI, it has directly become rival to Google Pay, Amazon Pay and Paytm.

According to a report in the English newspaper Business Standard, a Reserve Bank of India official said that after regulatory approval, WhatsApp will be able to launch its digital payment platform Whatsapp Pay across India in phases.

Got approval on this condition

Actually, WhatsApp had applied for digital payment platform long back, but it got approval when the company has considered the condition of storing data localization i.e. local data. In the first phase, WhatsApp will be able to provide payment services to one crore users in India. After accepting other conditions, the company will be able to rollout this feature for all its users.

The country's largest digital payment platform

After rolling out all the users, it will become the largest digital payment platform in the country. WhatsApp has more than 400 million users in India. WhatsApp launched digital payment facility for 10 lakh users in association with ICICI Bank in February 2018. However, the company has since been waiting for regulatory approval. The service is based on the Unified Payments Interface developed by NPCI.

The Reserve Bank of India had instructed NPCI not to allow digital payment services to be launched until WhatsApp Pay is ready to fully comply with the condition of data localization.