In February this year, the popular chat app WhatsApp tried the initial roll-out of WhatsApp Pay. All major players are under tremendous pressure to provide payment features to its users in order to stay competitive in the market. WhatsApp Pay is making use of UPI, the Indian government’s Unified Payments Interface.

After the initial rollout, now it looks like this Facebook-owned app is ready to officially launch this feature latest by next week. To access this feature that allows the users to transfer money, they need to go to Settings > Payments > Send Payment > Send to UPI ID. You can send money by either choosing the person from your contact list or you can directly enter the UPI ID of the person and make the transfer.

Though WhatsApp came out with its Beta version for 1 million users in February itself, it was because of its partners that it was not able to go ahead with the widespread rollout until now. It has partnered with four banks ICICI, HDFC, Axis Bank, and SBI, but the lack of necessary systems in place it caused the delay. Now WhatsApp has decided to go ahead with three partners. SBI will join in later.

WhatsApp has more than 200 million users in the country and with this feature it has the potential to threaten the Paytm business. Research shows that the users of this popular chat app are 20 times more than that of Paytm.

All the players like MobiKwik, Paytm, and Google Tez are looking for ways to capture a greater market share. With a new kid on the block, the competition is only going to get fiercer.