WhatsApp spokesperson believes that the future of UPI is bright in India 

Reacting after Brazil’s decision to suspend WhatsApp pay, which went live in the country earlier this month, the messaging platform said it remains “committed to launching the service in India”. “Even as we continue to work with our local partners and the Central Bank in Brazil, we remain committed to launching WhatsApp Payments in India,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said.

Brazil’s central bank said in a statement that rolling out the service “without previous analysis by the monetary authority could damage the Brazilian payments system in the areas of competition, efficiency and data privacy”. WhatsApp Pay has been live in India on an experiment-basis for a couple of years now, but it awaiting full clearance to rollout to the company’s 400 million-odd user base in the country.

The statement on Wednesday said India’s UPI was a “lighthouse model for the rest of the world, with local banks and institutions driving innovation on a local stack that is capable of delivering financial services for all”.

The statement added: “We believe the future of UPI is bright and are excited to provide a channel to bring hundreds of millions of WhatsApp users to India’s national network at a time when offering secure, cashless solutions is more important than ever. We do believe that we can play an enabling role in accelerating financial inclusion on the back of what has been a landmark Made in India innovation.”

Last week, WhatsApp had told the Supreme Court it was fully compliant with the RBI’s data localisation norms and had identified five data elements that would be stored locally. It also told the court that it had spent “significant engineering time and effort” to ensure this compliance.