Government lifts 100 million cap on WhatsApp Payment

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India is home to WhatsApp’s largest user base of over 500 million people. The government, on Tuesday, has removed restrictions on the app’s payments service, WhatsApp Payment, which is a major win for parent company Meta.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which oversees the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system, announced that WhatsApp can now expand its payments feature to all users in the country, lifting the previous cap of 100 million users. This was first reported by TechCrunch.

This decision represents a significant shift in regulatory policy, which had previously limited WhatsApp Payment’s rollout. Initially capped at 40 million users in 2020 and later extended to 100 million in 2022, the cautious approach by NPCI reflected concerns over market concentration in India’s booming digital payments sector.

India’s UPI platform processes over 13 billion transactions monthly, with Google Pay and PhonePe controlling more than 85 per cent of the market. WhatsApp’s expansion poses a direct challenge to these incumbents, bolstered by its massive user base and seamless integration with the messaging app.