WhatsApp Pay first started testing in India two years back with the hope that the country will be the first to start using the technology. However, it seems the company made a global debut of the feature in another developing country, Brazil.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a post on Monday, said Brazil is the first country where it is widely rolling out payments in WhatsApp.
"Today we're starting to launch payments for people using WhatsApp in Brazil. We're making sending and receiving money as easy as sharing photos," he said. He also claimed that the small businesses will be able to make sales right within WhatsApp. "To do this, we're building on Facebook Pay, which provides a secure and consistent way to make payments across our apps," he added.
Zuckerberg cleared that WhatsApp is working with local banks, including Banco do Brasil, Nubank, Sicredi as well as Cielo, the leading payments processor for merchants in Brazil.
The company revealed in an official blog post that it has built payments with security as priority. The payment method will use a special six digit PIN or fingerprint in order to stop unauthorised transactions. The post stated, "Payments on WhatsApp are made using Facebook Pay . We want that in future people and business can use the same card on all Facebook apps."
WhatsApp Pay was first tested in India. The instant messaging platform started the testing phase back in 2018, using UPI as the mode of transaction. However, the feature wasn’t rolled out widely due to regulatory issues. The payment service was first expected to be rolled out last year in India. It was only tested on 1 million Indian users. The company has about 400 million users in India.