WhatsApp appoints ex-Amazon Pay director to lead Payments in India
1 min read 28 Jun 2021, 02:49 PM ISTManesh Mahatme joined WhatsApp after spending nearly seven years at Amazon Pay India, where he was Director and then a Board Member. He has also spent four years at telecom giant Airtel’s payments unit, Airtel Money
PremiumNEW DELHI: Messaging giant, WhatsApp, had appointed Manesh Mahatme to head its payments business in India. Mahatme joined WhatsApp after spending nearly seven years at Amazon Pay India, where he was Director and then a Board Member. He also spent four years at telecom giant Airtel’s payments unit, Airtel Money.
“Manesh has been one of the key innovators driving the growth of digital payments in India over the last decade, and his experience will help us maximize the impact and scale of payments on WhatsApp," said Abhijit Bose, Head of WhatsApp India, in a statement.
“WhatsApp has immense potential to digitally empower people across segments and help accelerate the Government of India’s efforts to drive financial inclusion through UPI and digital payments," he added.
"Payments on WhatsApp is uniquely placed to be a significant partner in the country’s growth agenda by making digital payments accessible to users across the length and breadth of India," said Mahatme.
The Facebook-owned company’s payments platform has been grappling with regulatory concerns in the country for years now. The platform was cleared by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for using the country’s Unified Payments Platform (UPI) payments system in November last year. However, WhatsApp is only allowed to provide access to 20 million users for now.
The payments platform is also expected to be central to Facebook’s investment in billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Jio last year. On June 24, Ambani said the two companies have “actively developing" a “new commerce solution" that they plan to launch in the next few quarters.
