After Brazil suspended newly launched WhatsApp’s payments service to “preserve competitive environment” just after a week of its launch, the Facebook-owned messaging platform said it is committed to launching the digital payment service in India, a process that has been in the works since over two years now.
- Facebook seems to have been blindsided by the Brazilian regulator.
- We think the risk of this happening in India is far lower as:
- FB has been working closely with the regulator to resolve issues around data localization, which FB says has been done. This has been a drawn out and extended process taking two years to now.
- The Competition Commission of India’s clearing of Facebook’s $5.7bn investment in Reliance Jio Platform is a positive.
- There is already a robust ecosystem of players and competitors on the national Unified Payments Interface including Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm and Amazon Pay.