It seems WhatsApp is not about to lose out to Chinese tech giants WeChat and Alibaba as it rolls out its own digital payment service, WhatsApp Payments.

According to Engadget last year, the service is currently being tested in India where it has over 200 million daily active users.

WhatsApp has about 1.5 billion active users from all over the world.

Partnering With Banks

WhatsApp is working with major banks in India for this service, and only allows one user to transfer money to another user at the moment.

Image Credit: Twitter user @nagenderraos

All users have to do is verify their WhatsApp account and select their bank to transfer money within the WhatsApp interface.

Merchants are not included in this test launch.

What’s More For WhatsApp

Techcrunch reckons that the potential for WhatsApp to “dominate Indian P2P payments is strong” as digitalisation uptake has been strong since data plans and smartphones are inexpensive there.

With so many of us using WhatsApp on a daily basis, this new feature will surely be welcome in Singapore.

This can be seen as an alternative for people who do not have PayNow or PayAnyone, and we expect this to be useful for merchants who have verified accounts on the social messenging app.

Watch this space for updates.

Featured Image Credit: Lifewire.com