After one year, WhatsApp payments are available in Brazil again. The Facebook-owned chat platform has relaunched the feature in the country.
Brazil served as the launching pad for WhatsApp’s mobile payments, then it rolled out in India a few months later, but its central bank forced the service to suspend its payment feature just a few months after its launch.
WhatsApp Payments Back in Brazil
The banking authority only gave WhatsApp the approval to facilitate Visa or Mastercard-backed peer-to-peer payments this March after looking into whether it meets all of the rules regarding competition, efficiency, and data privacy.
According to Reuters, WhatsApp tried to avoid being categorized as a financial services company by relying on Visa’s and Mastercard’s existing bank licenses.
The payment processors were instructed to suspend money transfer activities through WhatsApp, and had to secure new permits.
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As for WhatsApp’s chat service, its parent company had to create a new unit named Facebook Pagamentos do Brasil that is now being regulated by the central bank, according to The Verge.
While the payment feature has been relaunched in Brazil, it won’t be accessible to everyone just yet. Only a limited number of people will have access to it at first, and they’ll have the power to invite other people to use the feature.
Users will only be able to send up to 5,000 Brazilian Real or $918 per month to each other without any extra charge.
Also, a single transaction has a 1,000 Brazilian Real or $184 limit, and users can’t process more than 20 transfers per day.
WhatsApp can only process peer-to-peer transfers at the moment, but it originally introduced the feature to help small merchants.
Local businesses in Brazil and India have been using WhatsApp as their main online presence, and the payment feature was supposed to help them easily accept digital payments. Facebook is still in talks with the central bank for merchant payments, and the company expects the feature will be launched within this year.
How WhatsApp Payment Works
To use WhatsApp Pay, a user must initiate a payment to a contact. Once the request is received, the user can set up their UPI account on WhatsApp.
WhatsApp Pay is an in-chat payment feature that allows users to make transactions through WhatsApp to their contact list. It is UPI-based payments service that allows users to send and receive money, and was developed by the National Payments Corporation of India or NPCI.
It was launched in other countries afterwards, like Brazil.
According to Business Standard, users can send money directly through chat by tapping on the share file icon and selecting payment. The payment section is available on the app’s shortcut menu. Users can check their transaction history and account details in that section.
The payment system works on the Unified Payments Interface or UPI method, where the fund transfers can be initiated without having to provide bank account numbers and IFSC codes of recipients.
Also, WhatsApp Pay allows the users to send money only to their contacts after which it enables UPI ID.
WhatsApp Pay users could enter the UPI ID and send money. Furthermore, WhatsApp users can also send money to those who are not in their contact list via a QR code.
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Written by Sophie Webster
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