WhatsApp payments kickstarted in India almost a year ago to a lukewarm response which resulted in the Meta-owned company doling out cash back options. Now, we hear that the company could be getting ready to broaden the scope of its payment option by including global transactions.
Towards this end, WhatsApp appears to be working to integrate all of Meta's payments and services units under the Novi brand. In a series of tweets, the head of Novi David Marcus had stated that all their "payments and financial services unit and products" would collapse under this brand.
Meanwhile, XDA Developers has reported spotting of some new strings in an APK teardown of the WhatsApp's next version. They appeared to indicate that WhatsApp could end up requiring a identity verification process for using the payments option, something that users in India did not have to given that the payment gateway used by the messenger app was the government-owned UPI.
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Today with Facebook becoming Meta, we're unifying our payments and financial services unit and products under the @Novi brand. Let me unpack what this will mean across @Meta. 1/7 pic.twitter.com/LkWkpMdTxnOctober 28, 2021
Indications to the imminent integration of all payments within the Meta universe into the Novi brand can also be gauged from the fact that the teardown appears to link the identity verification to the Novi wallet integration and not to WhatsApp's current payment offerings.
The Meta-owned Novi digital wallet uses digital currencies to simplify global money transfers. The service, currently available both in the United States and Guatemala, uses cryptocurrency Pax Dollars that is valued one-to-one by the US dollar. Given the unification of services prompted by the Meta change, WhatsApp also could be getting ready for this change.
Marcus had further explained that following the unification of the services, users can experience changes around person-to-person payments on Facebook Messenger in the US as well as WhatsApp in India. In addition, it would enable the donations product of Meta, facilitate easy checkout for merchants and enable advertisers to easily purchase ads while allowing cross-border payments with Novi.
He claimed that Novi had processed more than $100 billion in payments across the last 12 months on their various products and going forward will work to empower everyone, everywhere across the global financial system to accelerate financial inclusion and economic development.
Reports published on WABetaInfo also spotted evidence of Novi integration and even shared a screenshot of the feature.
Would we need another KYC round?
Would it mean that people in India too can transfer funds easily across the world if Meta launches Novi in India? Tough to say, given that the Reserve Bank of India has not accepted cryptocurrency as a legal tender and it remains to be seen whether the Indian users of WhatsApp would really want to go through another round of KYC.
The Novi website also mentions users would require to verify their identity using a valid government-issued photo identity card in order to use the digital wallet. What remains unclear as yet is whether Novi would arrive in India any time soon, given the levels of control that India's federal government places on digital payments.
Which could well mean that since WhatsApp currently uses UPI in India, users here will have no need to worry about additional user verification documents. And there is nothing from Meta for the moment that suggests a change, though we can be sure that certain class of WhatsApp pay users wouldn't mind a crypto transfer of funds.
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