WhatsApp announced a brilliant new feature: the capability to transfer money using the app

On June 18, 2020, WhatsApp announced a brilliant new feature: the capability to transfer money using the app. It launched but was quickly stopped. Now, it’s back.

The launch was welcomed as one of the most convenient ways to pay a friend, colleague. Initially, it was released in Brazil, with WhatsApp saying it planned to roll the service out to more countries in due course.

Then, the service was quickly suspended less than a week after the announcement, because of anti-competitive concerns – Brazil’s central bank felt that it could be damaging to Brazilian banks and financial technology companies and that there could be data privacy issues.

The service is ground-breaking because it would work, simply, for so many people. Apple has a similar service, Apple Pay Cash, but it only works between users of Apple devices, whereas WhatsApp is common to iPhone and Android devices. The reach is amazing: over half of Brazil’s 213 million population are WhatsApp users.

Now, the bank has removed the block so that users can send each other money using Visa and Mastercard.

WhatsApp wasn’t recognized as a financial services company in Brazil, nor did it want to be but regulatory pressure meant it needed its own financial approval. Eventually, as reported by Reuters, WhatsApp sought formal approval as a payments initiator and will use Visa and Mastercard as processors. The card systems got new permits to work with the app.

However, though the initial plan was that users could make payments to businesses, WhatsApp is only permitted to action peer-to-peer payments. Facebook, in the meantime, is trying to seek approval to work with merchants, too. No date has been set for the new service to launch, though a WhatsApp spokesperson said it’s making final preparations to have payments available as soon as possible.

Assuming WhatsApp is still planning to expand beyond Brazil, this could still be a real game-changer, with its biggest market, India, a likely target. It’s something that could simply revolutionize payments for everyone.