Paytm accusing WhatsApp of unfair play in digital payments!

WhatsApp payments rollout started in India earlier this month and though the feature hasn't even become available to all users yet, it has sparked a debate in the country's digital payments community. WhatsApp payments are built on top of UPI, a layer that greatly simplifies interoperability between various banks, and questions are now being asked if the Facebook-owned messaging app is living up to the spirit of interoperability behind the UPI. Paytm, which operates the largest digital wallet in India, is one of the competitors to WhatsApp in payments, introduced its own UPI payments feature recently. Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma said that Facebook with WhatsApp payments Facebook is "killing beautiful open UPI system with its custom close garden implementation."

Sharma tweeted this on Wednesday and from there, the narrative online quickly shifted to Paytm being against "foreign" companies, though Sharma later clarified that his tweets were not about a foreign company, but rather about NPCI lettings WhatsApp integrate UPI payments without needing to incorporate safeguards other payments apps had to integrate. NPCI is a private entity run by a consortium of banks, which operates UPI and a bunch of other financial products, and acts as a quasi-regulator for the payments industry. In a televised interview, Sharma further went on to say that Facebook and WhatsApp are evil, although a Paytm representative later stressed that he was not talking in the context of the UPI, and that the statement was being blown out of proportion.

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