Whatsapp to go UPI way; in talks with SBI and NPCI

Whatsapp, the global messaging application, is in talks with the State Bank of India, the National Payments Corporation of India and a few other financial institutions to allow its users to make payments via United Payments Interface (UPI), which facilitates instant fund transfer between two bank accounts on the mobile platform. A senior SBI official commented that “Due to the complexity of the architecture, WhatsApp is in discussions with the State Bank of India, NPCI and few other banks to devise ways to integrate their systems with the bank and with NPCI. We are currently at the ‘proof of concept’ stage, looking at ways to integrate it with our back-end”.

UPI allows instant settlement of funds between peers. If the system is approved by the financial institutions, then WhatsApp will identify the recipient and the UPI layer will allow funds to get settled between two parties. It is not new, though. Similar technologies have been adopted by apps such as Truecaller, which has worked with ICICI Bank to implement UPI based payments. Hike Messenger, too, has started UPI-based payments in collaboration with Yes Bank.

Though the popularity of Whatsapp is recognizable, the security of the transactions is an issue which the institutions are afraid about. An executive commented that “Some security protocols will need to be implemented around payments through WhatsApp. If it decides to use Aadhaar, then we will have to enable biometric authentication”.