NPCI approved WhatsApp’s payment service to 40 million

NPCI approved WhatsApp’s payment service to 40 million

Team Ambitiousbaba and AB are here with a Current Affairs Special Series. In this series, candidates will be introduced to current affairs topics daily, which will not only improve their general awareness but also will ensure that the candidates do not lack in any current affairs topic. Today’s Current Affairs topic is “NPCI approved WhatsApp’s payment service to 40 million”

NPCI has approved for increasing the user cap for WhatsApp’s payment service from the current 20 million to 40 million to intensify competition in the digital payments space in India.

NPCI will enhance this in a phased manner so that the payment system is not overwhelmed. Their numbers have gone up significantly and are very close to breaching the 20 million.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) which controls retail payment and settlement systems of the country had allowed WhatsApp to start payment services in November last year with a cap of 20 million users. The Meta-owned company was awaited to disrupt the payments space with its large user base in India, but it had not taken off in a big way.

WhatsApp has decided to strengthen efforts to expand the payment service and wants more users now.

WhatsApp’s messenger service has over 400 million users in India and abstracting the limit for the payment service in one goes may extend to extremely high transaction volumes on NPCI’s platform.

NPCI is taking increasing the cap in a phased manner because it cannot manage the huge volumes that might come with removing the cap completely.

Other online payment service providers:

WhatsApp’s share in India’s monthly payments remains at a little 0.06 percent compared with 47 percent for PhonePe and 34 percent for Google Pay.

Even NPCI in November last year put a limit on the volume of United Payment Interface-based transactions for third-party payment apps such as Phone Pe, Google Pay and WhatsApp to 30 percent of the total volume of transactions worked in the preceding three months on a rolling basis.

Cut-off date:

Operators are expected to comply with this norm by January 2023.

Question & Answer:

Q1. Which one control and manages the digital payments in India?

Ans. NPCI (National Payment Corporation of India)

Q2. Who is the MD & CEO of NPCI?

Ans. Dilip Asbe

Q3. NPCI increased WhatsApp’s payment service from 20 million to how much?

Ans. 40 million