WhatsApp rolled out its mobile payment services in Brazil last week, but has already been suspended by the central bank.
Brazil’s central bank stated that the decision to halt the rollout to preserve an adequately competitive environment, TechCrunch reported. It also said that the decision had been made as the central bank had not had a sufficient opportunity to analyse the service before it was launched in Brazil.
As a results, banks are now asking WhatsApp’s partners Mastercard and Visa to halt any money transfer using the Facebook-owned app risk fines and other sanctions.
This is another hard blow to WhatsApp, which is already struggling to get its services launched in India, despite having kickstarted its testing in the nation two years ago. The Indian digital payments market is expected to grow to $1tn by 2023.
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