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Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

(www.economist.com)
666 points jcartw | 2 comments | 08 Apr 25 10:59 UTC | HN request time: 1.843s | source
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afarah1 ◴[08 Apr 25 11:57 UTC] 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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nindalf ◴[08 Apr 25 12:29 UTC] 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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1. ksynwa ◴[09 Apr 25 02:53 UTC] No.43628470[source]▶
WhatsApp does handle UPI though. Were they denied in the past?
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2. nindalf ◴[09 Apr 25 05:06 UTC] 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.