WhatsApp payment may soon become a reality with partners like SBI, ICICI bank

The payment feature on WhatsApp is likely to become a reality soon in partnership with banks like State Bank of India, ICICI bank among others. 

According to a report in The Economic Times, WhatsApp payments feature could go live in February's first half. 

At present, WhatsApp has a customers base of around 200 million users, due to which experts believe that if the payment feature will go live, that will be the much needed puch to the digital transactions in the country. 

According to the newspaper, WhatsApp is in initial talks with integrating its unified payments interface (UPI) platform with popular Indian banks such as the State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis bank. 

The payments feature is being tested and will have to undergo a lot of security clearances before it is rolled out to the public.

The report quoted a banker, stated, WhatsApp is at various stages of system integration with the banks. The platform is currently being tested on beta stage with one of the partner banks. According to one source, depending on the how the trials play out, the feature should be released to consumers by the end of February.

He further told the publication UPI also has complicated settlement systems between various banking partners and these issues have to be resolved before going live.

Last year, it was reported that WhatsApp is working on the feature to enable fund transfers through chats. 

The new feature will be called WhatsApp Pay, is reportedly in its final testing phase. The feature will work on a UPI based payment method. 

If various reports are to be believed, the WhatsApp pay feature will also reveal a 'Rupees' symbol under the 'Attachment' option in a WhatsApp chat. 

Using the Rupee symbol, users can transfer money via one-step simple process by entering the amount to be transferred and the required UPI .