Facebook’s WhatsApp, the Mountain View, Calif.-based messaging app with a broad global following, may be preparing to roll out person-to-person payments, beginning with its app in India.
Processing Content
The clue is a new job posting on Facebook’s career site seeking an exec to lead digital transactions for WhatsApp in India. The position calls for someone who grasps India’s emerging digital payments platforms, including the bank-to-bank payments platform UPI, BHIM and Aadhaar, who’s willing to help “scale global support” for digital transactions on WhatsApp.
WhatsApp, with 1 billion users, is highly popular within India and as a vehicle for cross-border communications through voice and messaging, though unlike Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp currently doesn’t support payments. More than 200 million Indian consumers subscribe to WhatsApp.
Since India cracked down on cash last fall with its demonetization of small-denomination bills, digital payments volume has been steadily rising, with local players like Paytm notching major gains in usage, while newcomers such as Sweden’s Truecaller, also are moving into the market.
People are seen as silhouettes as they check mobile devices whilst standing against an illuminated wall bearing WhatsApp Inc's logo in this arranged photograph in London, U.K., on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. WhatsApp Inc. offers a cross-platform mobile messaging application that allows users to exchange messages. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
Kate Fitzgerald is an Arizona-based senior editor for American Banker and longtime payments reporter. Fitzgerald began her journalism career at the... Read full bio
Banks continue to push back on what they describe as insufficient protections against stablecoin yield as the Senate Banking Committee is poised to mark up its long-awaited crypto market structure bill this week.
Banks' deposit costs fell as the Fed made borrowing cheaper. But signs of increased competition are already emerging, and analysts see a tougher road ahead.
The Federal Reserve's April financial stability report found that asset valuations remain elevated, even as investors are beginning to demand more compensation for risk amid rising uncertainty around monetary policy.
Banking groups that sued the state of Illinois over its law barring banks from charging interchange fees on taxes and tips cheered an appeals court ruling remanding the law to a lower court and vowed to keep the law going into effect, which is slated for July 1.
Stephan Feldgoise and Joshua Schiffrin will join Goldman Sachs' management committee; Fidelity Investments is dismissing about 800 personnel as it restructures its technology and product-delivery teams; Citi has hired JPMorgan's André Ross as its country officer and banking head for South Africa; and more in this week's banking news roundup.
