New Delhi, Nov. 9 -- The National Payments Corporation of India has permitted Facebook-owned WhatsApp to launch its payment service, WhatsApp Pay, in India. Hours after NPCI's announcement, the company also announced that it is rolling out WhatsApp Pay in India. The service will be available in 10 Indian regional languages in the latest stable version of WhatsApp on Android and iOS.

Like Google or any other payments app, this service is also built atop UPI which is a payments infrastructure built by a coalition of large banks in India. NPCI said that the service can expand among users in a graded manner. To start with, the company can only offer it to 20 million of its 400 million users. Also, it is required to work with multiple banking...