New Delhi: The Facebook Inc.-owned WhatsApp messenger announced on Monday that it will appoint a former Amazon executive to lead payments in India. The company hopes to scale the service in the country, which is its largest market by users.
Manesh Mahatme is the official director of WhatsApp payments – India, and will help improve users’ payments experiences and grow the business, WhatsApp said in a statement, confirming a Reuters news story in March.
Mahatme was previously a senior executive at Amazon, where he led the product and engineering teams for Amazon Pay, the US online retailer’s payments business. Previously, he was a consultant for Citigroup and Indian mobile carrier Bharti Airtel.
WhatsApp, which has more than 500 million Indian users, was approved last year to launch its payments system in the country, but regulators have so far limited its rollout to 20 million users. But it has big ambitions, and Facebook’s $5.7 billion investment last year in billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Platforms will allow it to offer payment services to millions of mom-and-pop stores.
WhatsApp has plans to partner with banks in order to offer financial services such as pensions and insurance, its India head Abhijit Bose, also a veteran of the payments industry, said last year.
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