WhatsApp Working New Feature which allows Indian users to International Payments via UPI

WhatsApp is reportedly working on launching international payments through its in-app Unified Payments Interface (UPI) service. WhatsApp Payments or WhatsApp Pay was first introduced as an in-app service for users in India in November 2020. The platform was a late entrant in the payments sector as other platforms had already launched the service. Now the instant messaging platform is working on adding international payments with a limit of up to three months to expand the userbase of its financial service.

The feature was spotted by tipster @AssembleDebug share The tipster was quoted by the tipster who said in a post on X that “WhatsApp International Payments via UPI for Indian users. It is not available to users at the moment, but WhatsApp might be working on it as I couldn’t find anything about it on Google.” The tipster also shared screenshots of the feature but didn’t reveal which beta version it was added to.

In the screenshot, a new option can be seen below the Forget UPI PIN option in the Payments menu. The new feature is labelled International Payments and when clicked, it opens a separate screen where users can select a start and end date for the feature and turn it on. As per the screenshot, users will have to enter the UPI PIN to turn on the feature.

International payments allow users with Indian bank accounts to send money to select international merchants and complete transactions. This feature will work only in countries where banks have enabled international UPI service. International payments through UPI in India are automatically turned off, after which it needs to be manually activated again. According to the tipster, WhatsApp may have a period of 3 months for this. Apart from this, Google Pay offers a transaction period of 7 days. Especially Google Pay, PhonePe and some other companies in the UPI sector already provide this service.