Facebook owned immensely popular instant messaging app, the Whatsapp has now shown a trailer of its next major upgradation. The long rumored Whatsapp Payments option exclusively for India is now seen available on certain beta testers. Unfortunately, not fully functional for this time around as you cannot perform person-to-person transactions.
Luckily enough, some of the beta testers are able to notice a payment option in the attachment menu between Document and Gallery. Consequently, that replaces the Camera icon from its long held space in the attachments. In case if you don’t know, Whatsapp Payment is UPI enabled and hence will be a counterpart of similar digital payment services such as Google’s Tez, PayTM, PhonePe etc.
Once the Payment option is chosen, the user will be welcomed by an introductory screen of Whatsapp Payment. And, then will be taken to a page where there’ll be a complete list of supported Indian financial institution/bank names. However, if you further try to add a bank account it will show a “Couldn’t add bank account” error message.
Nevertheless, if you’re an iOS user cum Whatsapp beta tester in India, you might be able to successfully transact via Whatsapp Payment solution. Hence, it seems the Android users have to wait a little more before the function becomes completely live.
It’s quite obvious that Whatsapp is either beta testing the feature without prior notice. Or else, someone inside the firm has pressed the wrong button. Whatsover may be the reason, we’ve to wait until the official response from Whatsapp before any judgement.
