How to send and receive money on WhatsApp
What's the story
Earlier this week, WhatsApp started testing its Unified Payment Interface-based payment service in India.
While the service hasn't been officially released in India yet, it has been rolled out to a small group of users.
WhatsApp plans to release the update sometime in the next few weeks. But if you don't want to wait for that long, here's how you can get it.
Invite-only
WhatsApp has taken an invite-only approach before UPI feature release
Much like how WhatsApp rolled out its voice calling feature, users who already have the UPI feature can distribute it among their contacts.
So, if you want the payment service right now, your best bet is to ask a friend with the UPI feature enabled to seed the feature to you.
Here's what's needed to be done.
Steps
Here are the steps needed to get the UPI feature
Anyone with the UPI feature enabled can distribute it to others.
To do so, one has to open a contact's chat and click on the attach icon.
Under the attach icon, one has to open 'Payment' and facilitate a transaction.
Although a prompt will say that the transaction has failed, the contact in question will receive the feature on their WhatsApp.
Digital payments
WhatsApp UPI feature could massively boost digital payments in India
Analysts are of the opinion that the introduction of the UPI feature in WhatsApp could prove to be a massive boost to the digital payments landscape in India.
Despite competition from the likes of Paytm, Hike, Truecaller, and Google Tez, WhatsApp has the upper hand in India owing to its massive user base of over 200 million people.