Facebook Inc. will offer the payment service WhatsApp to the citizens of India next week, Bloomberg reports.
The messenger will work together with HDFC Bank Ltd., ICICI Bank Ltd. and Axis Bank Ltd. for processing the translations, and the State Bank of India will join, when it has necessary systems. Initially, Facebook planned cooperation with four partners, but it decided to continue working with only three partners due to the competition, finance.ua reports.
The experts compare India’s market entry of WhatsApp with WeChat, which changed the payment system in China, when except for the message exchange, the application had additional functions. The experimental version of WhatsApp App, which started from 1 mln users in February, obtained great reviews, and now, the service is the serious threat for Google, Tez and Alibaba, supported by Paytm, which do not have social media advantages.
“WhatsApp has the excellent starting point: monopoly in chat. It is the serious rival on the market”, Vivek Belgavi, FinTech Leader in PwC India, commented.
