WhatsApp payments are now available again in Brazil, as the Facebook-owned messaging service has relaunched the feature almost a year after its initial launch in the country. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, stated in a video that WhatsApp has resumed peer-to-peer money transfer services in Brazil after the central bank banned them nearly a year ago. Brazil was the second platform for launching WhatsApp payments, following its introduction in India a few months earlier. However, the central bank forced the service to suspend the feature in June 2020, just days after its launch there.
In March, the Brazilian central bank paved the way for the service to allow sending money using Visa and Mastercard networks, after confirming that it meets all regulations related to competition, efficiency, and data privacy. This followed a statement from the central bank suggesting that WhatsApp payments could harm the current payment system in Brazil concerning competition, efficiency, and data privacy, noting that it had failed to obtain the required licenses.
Initially, WhatsApp attempted to avoid becoming a financial services company in Brazil and sought to obtain licenses by relying on the existing banking licenses of Visa and Mastercard but ultimately succumbed to regulatory pressures. The monetary authority also requested that the tech giant be classified as a financial services company in Brazil, prompting Facebook to establish a new unit called Facebook Pagamentos do Brasil, which is now regulated by the central bank.
Despite the feature's relaunch in Brazil, it will not be available to everyone from the start. A limited number of users will initially have access to it, and they can invite others to use the feature. WhatsApp users in Brazil, numbering 120 million, can send up to 5,000 Brazilian Reais (918 USD) monthly to each other for free. Additionally, there is a single transaction cap of 1,000 Brazilian Reais (184 USD), and users cannot process more than 20 transactions in a day.
Currently, WhatsApp can only handle peer-to-peer transfers, but it originally introduced the feature to assist small merchants. Local businesses in Brazil and India use the messaging app as their primary online presence, and the payment feature was intended to facilitate easy acceptance of digital payments. Facebook is still in discussions with the central bank regarding merchant payments and reportedly expects to launch the feature sometime this year, adding a new revenue stream for WhatsApp. Total card payments in Brazil last year reached 2 trillion Reais (368.12 billion USD), an increase of 8.2% from 2019.
