According to sources contrary to media reports claiming that now you can transfer money via WhatsApp in India, the digital payment feature in the platform is still in the testing phase and will be officially rolled out to over 200 million Indian users in the days to come. Meanwhile according to sources the feature is currently in beta but has not been publicly announced because it is not widely available at this moment.
Sources stated that some users have received the beta update but "it will be wrong to assume that the feature is currently live in India for all users". Moreover when launched, the new payments feature is set to give a tough competition to Paytm and other digital payment services like Google Tez.
Accordingly the payments feature would take advantage of UPI (Unified
Payments Interface) and include support by a number of banks, including the
State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, and Axis Bank. Furthermore in order
to configure the feature, users must first verify their phone number via SMS
and then choose a bank and thereafter after the completion of the configuration,
the option to send a payment becomes available.
