WhatsApp is partnering with fintech firm PayU to roll out prepaid phone recharges in India, allowing users to top up mobile numbers for major operators including Jio, Airtel, and Vodafone Idea directly within the messaging app.
The feature will be made available to all WhatsApp users in the country over the next two weeks, PayU confirmed to TechCrunch.
Despite having more than 500 million users in India and launching payments in 2020, WhatsApp remains a marginal player in the country's digital payments space, driven by the government-backed Unified Payments Interface.
The messaging app processed over 130 million transactions in March, according to the latest statistics from the National Payments Corporation of India, far behind rivals such as Walmart-owned PhonePe and Google Pay, which processed more than 10.5 billion and 7.5 billion transactions, respectively, over the same period.
WhatsApp's payments usage has picked up since early 2025, after onboarding restrictions were lifted, with its UPI transactions more than doubling from about 61 million in January 2025, per the NPCI data.