Ashneer Grover Says WhatsApp Pay Is The Biggest Tech Product Failure In India, Paytm CEO Reacts

In India, the use of electronic authentication and digital payment systems like mobile wallets and payment banks is increasing day by day and is currently outpacing the number of developed countries in this field.

Recent years have seen an increase in the number of digital transactions in the nation, and according to numerous financial insights, in recent years, more transactions will take place at Points of Sale (PoS) than at ATMs in terms of volume and value. The value of transactions in the Indian digital payments market is anticipated to expand by 80% to reach around $283 billion by that time.

And it’s all possible because of UPI!

United Payment Interface (UPI), a name that was unfamiliar or untrue before April 2016, is the face of the ongoing financial revolution in modern India.

Who could have predicted that a country with a strong cash economy like India would experience a significant increase in digital payments?

A significant portion of our society has adjusted to UPI, from a hawker to an expensive showroom. It actively makes use of the payment integration system. However, as the use of UPI goes upward, many new apps such as PhonePe and Paytm have also emerged.

Likewise, many existing companies also introduced payment systems to their software. However, not all become successful. While Amazon Pay of Amazon become so much more successful, WhatsApp Pay fails to capture the market.

Ashneer Grover slams WhatsApp Pay as the biggest failure

Highlighting the same, Ashneer Grover, a co-founder of BharatPe, also criticized WhatsApp Pay and Meta for how they handled India’s online payment system. He referred to WhatsApp Pay as “the biggest failure in India as a tech product” on Wednesday and claimed it ought to have defeated GooglePay, Paytm, and Phonepe.

Taking to Twitter, he wrote,

“WhatsApp Pay has to be the biggest failure in India as a tech product. Everyone has @WhatsApp on their phone – sending money on WA using UPI is as easy as sending pic. It should have beaten @Paytm @PhonePe @GooglePay. Country managers can’t win you markets – good riddance now !”

Along with the cutting of WhatsApp’s print advertisement from the newspaper

Ashneer added,

“Yeh ad hi dekh lo – iska kya acahar daalega koi customer – itni ad WhatsApp Pay ki kar lete instead. Public policy uncle aur vakil babu dhanda chalayenge to aisa hi hoga”

The remarks came a day after WhatsApp India chief Abhijit Bose and parent firm Meta India’s director of public policy, Rajiv Aggarwal, quit the business, less than two weeks after the resignation of Meta India’s country leader Ajit Mohan.

Surprisingly, Grover’s tweet on Paytm received a “like” from Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the CEO of Paytm.

The departure of Meta’s and WhatsApp Pay’s top executives coincides with Facebook’s parent company’s November 9 global layoff of 11,000 staff members. However, sources close to the matter informed media sites that these departures had nothing to do with the layoffs.

On the other side, Grover, who was involved in a legal dispute with the BharatPe board and resigned as its managing director in April, revealed last week that his book, “Doglapan” (double standards), will be released next month.