Visa India’s ex-head to lead WhatsApp Pay?

Mumbai:

Visa India’s

former head

Uttam Nayak

is understood to be in the race to head

WhatsApp Pay

. The Facebook-owned messaging service business has been looking for a CEO for its payments business for some time.


WhatsApp Pay is expected to disrupt the Indian payments market, given the ubiquity of the messaging application on Indian phones. Unlike Google, which requires a user to install a separate app Google Tez, WhatsApp has made payments under the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform seamless with the messaging service. Once linked to their bank accounts, users can make payments in a manner that is similar to sending attachments with their messages.

However, WhatsApp Pay has been facing regulatory headwinds following objection from incumbents, like

Vijay Shekar Sharma

of Paytm, who have complained that the WhatsApp beta version can make payments without a ‘log-in’ session. Another impediment is the directive from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) requiring payment companies to maintain their customer data within India.

Nayak is currently overseeing Visa’s emerging markets as senior vice-president (digital) and is based in the Middle East. He was among those shortlisted to head the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), a position which eventually went to Dilip Asbe who was then the chief operating officer of the corporation.

Nayak had played a pioneering role in M-Visa — a QR-based payments solution that was first launched in India and adopted in other markets. WhatsApp, too, plans to use India as the launch pad for its payment operations globally.

WhatsApp has also been facing resistance in the US over its payment ambitions. One of the reasons for its founder Jan Koum exiting Facebook is understood to be his opposition to WhatsApp being used as a payments tool. He had, however, agreed for the integration with UPI in India.