At the end of 2020 Meta introduced WhatsApp Pay, a new feature with which users can send and receive money for free without leaving the instant messaging application. At that time, WhatsApp was installed over 2,000 million mobile phones worldwide, an advantage that Mark Zuckerberg’s company wanted to exploit to unseat the kings of the sector, Bizum and Twyp. To achieve this, he would have launched this service first in India, then in Brazil and, subsequently, he would have extended it to the rest of the countries. Two years after, expansion plans are blocked.
Brazil and India host between the two to nearly 500 million WhatsApp users, so it seemed logical that Meta would start expanding its free money transfer functionality to these countries. However, he failed to reach the expected figures. Proof of this is the survey carried out in February 2022 by Mobile time y Opinion boxhence it follows that only 17% of the more than 2,000 people interviewed had registered their debit card in the app to use WhatsApp Pay.
There are several reasons why the feature did not achieve the expected positioning in Brazil. Meanwhile him 45% of the users interviewed do not seem to be interested in the service, another 30% distrusts WhatsApp Pay and there are also those who did not even know it existed.
However, the main obstacle in Meta’s plans is Pix, the digital payment system developed by the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB). Although the launch of this method took place almost at the same time as that of WhatsApp Pay, they have since followed very different paths: in the same time frame, 478 million users registered on the Brazilian platformaccording to the bank’s own data.
The difference between the success of Pix and the failure of WhatsApp Pay would lie precisely in his Easy to use, but also in your promotional campaign. To operate in Brazil, the Meta function needed the authorization from the Brazilian Central Bank, which he only got two months before his release and that could have prevented him from giving him the necessary push. For its part, BCB has carried out “a real dissemination, communication and education operation”, says an expert consulted by Yahoo! Finance.
Brazil is one of the most competitive markets in the fintech sector. According to Statista’s calculations, the 31% of startups of this type who were in Latin America in April 2022 were in Brazilian territory.
WhatsApp Business
At the moment, it is unknown what the next steps are to be followed within the Meta plan to expand its payment function. What is known is that the company is still working on the launch of WhatsApp Premium, a paid subscription with advanced features for businesses. However, its price is still unknown.
The project is currently in the early stage, so it is only reaching WhatsApp Business Beta members, as published Xataka. The new paid subscription gives access to two new functions: it allows create a custom link – replacing the classic link with the phone number – e connect up to ten web devices – no cell phones – on the bill. That number drops to 4 for free profiles.
