WhatsApp is looking to offer loans to users after listing credit payments as one of its business plans in a filing to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
Earlier this month, in a regulatory filing, the company said it wants to “advance money or give credit on such terms as may seem expedient, and with or without security, to customers and others.”
However, as the company is barred by law from doing any banking business, it’ll have to execute this product through partnerships with existing banks.
In 2018, WhatsApp started testing its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) based product in India with a cap of 1 million users. After that, the project has hit a wall with several regulatory restrictions. The company intended to launch the payment feature by the end of the last year, but failed to get a nod from authorities.
In February, a news agency reported that WhatsApp will roll out payments to 10 million users in the next phase. But in an interview with a news channel, earlier this month,
Facebook India‘s Head, Ajit Mohan, said the payments userbase still stands at 1 million.
With more than 400 million users in the country, WhatsApp has a great chance of becoming a major player in the digital payments sector rivalling Paytm, PhonePe, and Google Tez. According to a financial service company, the Indian digital payments industry is set to reach $1 trillion by 2023.
