WhatsApp may soon Launch UPI based Digital Payments in India

Ever since the decision to demonetize the economy by pulling back higher denomination currency notes, India has been through a somewhat upside down trip. On one hand there were gets to weed out dark cash, while on the other, there was a firm call to adjust advanced methods of exchanges. It's fascinating however, how a fairly money driven economy is ascending to the cause, and we now have well over dozen methods of exchanges.
A month ago, Truecaller presented Truecaller 8 for Android which, in addition to identifying spam guests and obscure contacts, also permitted clients to transact with each other utilizing NPCI's UPI payment platform.
It has been over a year since UPI’s launch in India and a lot of companies like Olacabs, Truecaller and Razorpay have integrated UPI on their platforms. UPI payments are advantageous because they are direct instantaneous P2P Bank to Bank transfers without the need to have a Digital wallet to store money!
If the Truecaller announcement wasn’t enough, we also witnessed the India launch of the much-famed Samsung Pay, which brought the convenience of contactless payments not only to flagship Samsung devices, but also to feature phones. It seemed India’s move towards becoming a digital economy (or cashless economy at the least) was getting a radical push.
WhatsApp UPI Based Payment Platform
Now, the largest messaging app right now, WhatsApp is also in the process of integrating UPI on its platform, for peer to peer transfer of money. With over 1 billion active users on the platform and 200 million users in India, this integration can be the next biggest disruption for other similar services.
According to a report in The Ken, WhatsApp is hiring a head of digital transactions specializing in UPI and Aadhaar payments (via Factordaily). This indicates the stage is set for a payments-enabled WhatsApp messaging service. This could just be a trigger for other payment services such as Android Pay and Apple Pay to have a closer look at India, and ramp up in a market that is determined in its move towards digital payments.
It has the potential to become the main app for users to transfer money to other people. Even those not registered on mobile wallets will definitely have a WhatsApp account and the company can take advantage of this fact.