As Vijay Shekhar Sharma cries foul, here’s what other Indian payment leaders have to say on WhatsApp Payments

Friday February 16, 2018 , 4 min Read

Well, WhatsApp Payments has definitely started a Twitter debate amongst the Indian payment company heads.

Exactly a week back, WhatsApp kicked off its payments feature within the app. To this, Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led Paytm took a strong stance stating that the National Corporation of India (NPCI) has created an unfair playing field for the global messaging behemoth.

Speaking to YourStory, Deepak Abbot, Senior Vice President at Paytm, also said,

Technically the WhatsApp interface is interoperable, but the UX seems to be completely hinting that transactions are between WhatsApp to WhatsApp only. The NPCI’s Beta guidelines clearly mention that you need a password for the app. They (WhatsApp) won’t because it will affect their UX. So why this distinction for a bigger player?

Jumping in the discussion was the poster boy of Paytm, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, himself. He blamed that Facebook is killing the open UPI system through its close garden implementation.

After failing to win war against India’s open internet with cheap tricks of free basics, Facebook is again in play.Killing beautiful open UPI system with its custom close garden implementation.I am surprised, champions of open @India_Stack , let it happen ! https://t.co/wIsNuF1AiB
— Vijay Shekhar (@vijayshekhar) February 14, 2018

Hours later, Vijay also replied to a tweet which accused him of dismissing the issue of capital dumping earlier and now alleging that WhatsApp is colonising Indian payments.

He stated that the NPCI was bending from their open standards — a bit too much for one company over the other. The tweet said,

Nope ! Pls see below and see this link when in past same organisation was blocking few other players of what is today being allowed so openly. https://t.co/x6vAkP6rVJ

It is about bending over way too much from your own open standard a bit too much for one company over other! pic.twitter.com/PUBiHr2AgQ
— Vijay Shekhar (@vijayshekhar) February 15, 2018

While Paytm’s long-time competitor Mobikwik also came out in the open to state its views, Bipin Preet Singh, Co-founder of MobiKwik, chose to rather highlight the double standards within the Indian payments ecosystem.

In a series of tweets, he stated,

All incumbents complaining about Whatsapp getting unfair advantage in its UPI implementation to further its business interests - “Those who live in glasshouses, ....... “ . There is clear record of private companies who got access first and exclusively when UPI was launched.1/n
— Bipin Preet Singh (@BipinSingh) February 14, 2018

Those complaining abt Whatsapp are the same folks who refuse to entertain neutral payment options(like @MobiKwik )on their own ecom websites/apps and instead promote only captive wallets. A standard of interoperability should incl wallet acceptance as well 2/n
— Bipin Preet Singh (@BipinSingh) February 14, 2018

Finally, he asked whether the powers of UPI have finally been ceded to the non-banks.

To me, the funniest and most ironic aspect of all this UPI stuff is that no one is talking about our poor banks. With UPI , banks wanted to compete with wallets. I wonder if they’ve already ceded too much control to non-banks. The story repeats . 4/4
— Bipin Preet Singh (@BipinSingh) February 14, 2018

While on the other hand, there was Kunal Shah, Founder of payment wallet, Freecharge, who stated that payment companies which are threatened by WhatsApp are going to tag it as anti-national.

All companies threatened by Whatsapp payments are going to tag it as anti national and try to pull it down as it’s hard to win on merit against network effects of Whatsapp.
This strategy worked for Patanjali and wonder if it will work for payment companies.— Kunal Shah (@kunalb11) February 14, 2018

Taking a slightly sarcastic approach was Amrish Rau, CEO of PayU India, who replied saying it's good to see that Chinese companies are standing against WhatsApp. However, he did point out the great user experience of WhatsApp.

Let’s get this clear, Whatsapp and UPI being targeted. Just reminds that even $ Billions are scared of great UX.
— Amrish Rau (@amrishrau) February 14, 2018