Abhijit Bose, Head of India, WhatsApp, believes Indian fintech innovation is years ahead of other countries, including the US.
Over the next two years, WhatsApp is set to partner for pilot projects to provide services including insurance, micro-pension and banking. The messenger giant will also then selectively invest in and scale up those partnerships.
Speaking at Global Fintech Fest on Wednesday, Bose said India is the company’s largest market, and he sees great potential in the fintech infrastructure to be made in India and scaled up to other countries.
“There are more chapters to be written, and I believe WhatsApp has a key role to play. WhatsApp will be supporting multiple pilots to test potential solutions. This will be done jointly with our partners as well as innovative tech partners.”
He said that WhatsApp has already started a few pilots with a few banking institutions such as ICICI Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank. Both these players have already generated over 10 lakh and 20 lakh users, respectively, in the past few months.
“Over the next few years, we plan to tie up with more banks, especially those that focus on MSMEs.”.
The two-day Global Fintech Fest is hosted by the Fintech Convergence Council (FCC) the flagship fintech committee of the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) along with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and the Payments Council of India.