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Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

(www.economist.com)
667 points jcartw | 3 comments | 4/8/2025, 10:59:00 AM | HN request time: 2.125s | source
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afarah1 ◴[4/8/2025, 11:57:00 AM] No.43620640[source]▶

WhatsApp is omnipresent for communication in Brazil, and WhatsApp Pay was ready before Pix, but the government blocked the launch to launch Pix first.[1] I rarely see this mentioned.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/brazil-suspends-w...

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1. nindalf ◴[4/8/2025, 12:29:00 PM] No.43620932[source]▶

Same in India. WhatsApp wanted to use the payment system UPI but wasn't granted permission to do. Same reason I think - one app that handled all communication and all payments would have been too powerful.

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2. ksynwa ◴[4/9/2025, 2:53:00 AM] No.43628470[source]▶

WhatsApp does handle UPI though. Were they denied in the past?

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3. nindalf ◴[4/9/2025, 5:06:00 AM] No.43629042[source]▶

WhatsApp had implemented the feature as early as 2018 but they were denied permission to launch. They were finally granted permission in 2020 … but only to onboard 1 million users. This limit was increased to 100 million in late 2022 and then removed in late 2024. (https://coingeek.com/whatsapp-pay-to-expand-upi-services-to-...).

WhatsApp currently has 600 million active users in India and has been the most popular app for a long time. If it had been granted permission in 2018 it would be the most popular UPI app now. There wouldn’t be a competitive app ecosystem like there is now.