Amazon’s head of acceptance and payment categories is heading over to WhatsApp in India to lead payments, Reuters reported on Friday (March 19), citing sources.
Manesh Mahatme, a seven-year Amazon Pay executive, was hired by WhatsApp at a time when digital messaging, shopping and payments is at a historic high in India and throughout much of the world.
“Mahatme is a hardcore payments professional; that’s the missing link for WhatsApp,” one of the sources told Reuters.
WhatsApp has a user base that tops 500 million. The Facebook-owned multiplatform messaging app considers India its primary market with more than 400 million users, even though it is one of the newer contenders for digital payments in the country. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Indian industry association ASSOCHAM have both said that the Indian digital payments market is tracking to be worth $135 billion by 2023.
Launched in 2009 and acquired by Facebook in 2016 for roughly $16 billion, WhatsApp was approved by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in 2019 to integrate a payments solution. However, it is currently limited to 20 million users.
Facebook’s $5.7 billion investment in billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Platforms digital unit has enabled WhatsApp to offer payment services to millions of small businesses in India.
WhatsApp has also been on the move to collaborate with banks so it can extend additional financial services to people in India, like pensions and insurance, Abhijit Bose, WhatsApp’s head of India, told Reuters last year.
In December of 2020, WhatsApp introduced a shopping cart feature to make it easier to shop and pay for merchandise within the app’s chat window. The new feature works in conjunction with its Catalogs tool, enabling consumers to quickly see which merchandise is available and helping sellers focus their chats around particular goods.
We’re always on the lookout for opportunities to partner with innovators and disruptors.
Learn More