WhatsApp, after its beta testing in India, has unveiled in-app payments in Brazil, as per a blog post by the company on Monday, reports TechCrunch. The payments will be carried out through Facebook Pay by Facebook, the parent company, which also said that it would be hitting Instagram, Messenger, Facebook, and eventually WhatsApp.
“Payments on WhatsApp are beginning to roll out to people across Brazil beginning today and we look forward to bringing it to everyone as we go forward,” says WhatsApp in the post. WhatsApp further adds that its digital payments are an open model and will welcome more partners in the future.
The payment service will not impose any fees on consumers, but merchants will have to pay a processing fee to receive payments. All users need to do is link a credit or debit card to their WhatsApp account, and transactions are encrypted and secured with either fingerprint or a six-digit PIN. As per the company, the payment service will support debit or credit cards from Banco do Brasil, Nubank, and Sicredi, with Cielo, Brazilian payments processor, to be added in the near future.
The peer-to-peer digital payment was in the works for some time, and WhatsApp even launched a closed beta in India in 2018, and many believed that country to be the first landing ground for WhatsApp payments. But as per TechCrunch, the regulatory issue in India became cumbersome for Facebook, and also the company somewhat had a particularly shrewd history there — Facebook’s plan to provide free Facebook access gathered a lot of criticism which led to accusations of digital colonialism.
WhatsApp, a part of Facebook since 2014 has more than 2 billion users, out of which 400 million active users are from India sitting at the top spot. Brazil, on the other hand, has 120 million monthly active users, claiming the number two spot.
