Full support for UPI payments via WhatsApp appears to be rolling out in India

It appears that WhatsApp’s UPI-based payment service is finally going live. Once enabled, the service will allow payments to and from any UPI service, including BHIM and Tez. [caption id=“attachment_4443095” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Whatsapp logo. Image credit. Whatsapp[/caption] The WhatsApp Payments rollout was, until now, limited to payments within WhatsApp, which severely limited its usefulness. According to a report on Entrackr, invites to the more powerful features have started rolling out, and anyone who updates their app or who has an invite will have access. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to verify any of Entrackr’s claims and Entrackr has not specified the exact version number of the app that they’re using. We expect that this is a staggered rollout that will arrive to more users over the next few weeks. Entrackr claims that they managed to invite over 20 people to the service and that they have transferred and received payments via QR codes. They also report some bugs and teething issues with the app. We’ll be keeping a close eye on WhatsApp and will let you know the moment there’s an update. In the meantime, a word of caution: Please do not share your mobile numbers publicly on social media asking people to send you invites. Doing so will invite phishing attacks and of course, a tonne of spam calls and messages.