When WhatsApp first began testing payments in India back in 2018, local players braced for disruption. The app’s massive reach — 400 million users at the time — raised fears it could wipe out competitors. But Indian regulators quickly stepped in, insisting WhatsApp store user data in the country and keep it separate from Facebook. The regulators also capped WhatsApp Pay’s user base at just 1 million. 

The cap was gradually raised and then entirely lifted in December 2024. But rivals had cemented their leads by then.

Six months on, the world’s largest messaging app holds a speck in India’s $3 trillion digital payments market. The market is dominated by Walmart-owned PhonePeiPhonePePhonePe is an Indian digital payments and financial services company founded in 2015.READ MORE and Google. Industry experts believe Meta’s struggle is not only because of the regulatory hurdles. The company has not done much to support its growth and build user trust.

“Even after the cap was lifted, WhatsApp didn’t do anything fundamentally different — no big product revamp, no cash-back play, no merchant push, no marketing blitz. It’s like they have lost interest,” Deepak Abbot, co-founder of gold loan app Indiagold and former senior vice president of products at Indian fintech firm Paytm, told Rest of World.

Between December 2024 and May 2025, WhatsApp Pay added just over 12 million transactions. In the same period, rivals Google Pay and PhonePe saw their transaction volume rise by nearly 700 million and 500 million, respectively, according to data from National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

Google Pay and PhonePe together account for over 80% of transactions on UPI, the wildly popular government-built payment system.

“It wasn’t simply a matter of delayed access — it was a matter of timing in a fast-moving ecosystem,” Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst and CEO at Greyhound Research, told Rest of World. “The platform’s arrival came after critical foundational layers of trust, habit, and brand affinity had already been built by incumbent players.”

According to Yugal Joshi, a partner at U.S.-based management consulting firm Everest Group, WhatsApp lacks key features that make digital payments seamless — such as clear transaction tracking and user-facing rewards — while its rivals have built deeper engagement through robust app interfaces, merchant partnerships, and financial incentives like cash-backs and scratch cards.

Brand perception is another barrier. Unlike established fintech brands, “users may be hesitant to trust [WhatsApp] with financial transactions due to its primary association with messaging,” Koppisetty Yasaswini Pujitha, banking analyst at GlobalData, told Rest of World.

WhatsApp’s only major push into digital payments came in July 2022 as Meta invested $5.7 billion in Reliance Jio, India’s largest telecom firm, run by the country’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. The deal enabled Reliance’s online grocery arm, JioMart, to launch a WhatsApp-based ordering service, advancing Meta’s push into digital payments.

The tie-up had “a lot of potential,” but Reliance Retail “has not met its promise or potential,” and “the WhatsApp Pay partnership is also taking a hit,” Jayanth Kolla, founder and partner at advisory firm Convergence Catalyst, told Rest of World.

Underinvestment appears to be a recurring theme. The company pushed digital storefronts on Facebook and Instagram, but it “hardly spent marketing dollars or bandwidth in even educating people about the [payments] feature,” Kolla said.

WhatsApp Pay’s international expansion has also largely fizzled. Outside India, it’s available only in Brazil, where it lets users send money to peers and pay merchants. In Singapore, the service is limited to individuals making payments to registered businesses. Talks about Mexico and Indonesia launches, reported back in 2019, haven’t yet materialized.

The Indian government plans to limit payment apps to 30% of UPI-enabled transactions for fair competition, but earlier this year, the deadline for that move was extended to December 2026, giving WhatsApp more runway to grow without regulatory limits. The real barrier however isn’t compliance but intent, according to Ankur Bisen, senior partner at Indian management consulting firm Technopak Advisors.

“QR codes, UI, all these things WhatsApp can also do. It’s very easy. There’s no big tech about these interventions, especially for a company like WhatsApp. But whether WhatsApp will want to do it or not, that’s a key question,” Bisen said.