WhatsApp Pushes Deeper Into Commerce With QR Code Payments In India – FinanceFeeds

Meta is turning WhatsApp into more than a chat app. At its business summit in Mumbai this week, the company unveiled a new feature that lets small firms generate QR codes in one tap, allowing customers to pay inside the app with their chosen method. For India’s hundreds of millions of WhatsApp users, the update is more than cosmetic. Until now, QR codes on the platform were mostly for pulling up a chat or catalog. The new tool completes the loop: customers can browse a business’s catalog, ask questions, and then pay without leaving the conversation. “Small businesses can now share their QR code easily and accept payments right in WhatsApp,” Meta said at the summit. Years in the Making Payments on WhatsApp in India have been a slow build, shaped as much by regulators as by technology. The service first launched as a pilot in 2018 but was capped at a tiny user base for years while the Reserve Bank of India and the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) pressed Meta on data-localization and compliance. The company cleared those hurdles gradually. A 20 million user cap came in 2020, doubled a year later, raised to 100 million in
Read More