WhatsApp offering cashback rewards on payments in India
WhatsApp, the most popular smartphone app in India, is employing one of the most popular strategies that has proven to drive users in the world’s second largest market to a service: cash-back, TechCrunch reports.
The Meta-owned instant messaging service is running a campaign as part of which it is giving away about 11 Indian rupees, or 14 cents, up to three times to users if they send money to three different people on the app, according to users and an official company support page.
The reward comes at a time when WhatsApp is attempting to expand the reach of its mobile payments service in India. Even as WhatsApp began exploring mobile payments in India as early as 2017, regulatory pushback has prevented the popular app from aggressively expanding its payments service.
WhatsApp got some relief earlier this month when the National Payments Corporation of India, the payments body that oversees the popular payments protocol UPI, which WhatsApp is using, permitted the messaging firm to extend the payments service to 100 million users, up from 40 million earlier.
WhatsApp, which began testing the cash-back rewards in India as early as November of last year (if not earlier), is extending the perk to users who have been using the app for at least 30 days and have registered for payments on WhatsApp by adding their bank account details.
WhatsApp Business users are not eligible.