WhatsApp rolls out prepaid mobile recharge feature in India amid slow payments growth

WhatsApp is introducing prepaid mobile recharge services in India as part of its efforts to drive more in-app transactions, even as it continues to lag behind dominant players like Walmart-owned PhonePe and Google Pay in the country’s digital payments ecosystem.

On Thursday, WhatsApp announced a partnership with fintech company PayU to enable prepaid mobile recharges directly in the app. The feature will allow users to top up mobile numbers for major telecom operators, including Jio, Airtel, and Vodafone Idea, without leaving the messaging platform. PayU confirmed that the rollout will be available to all WhatsApp users in India over the next two weeks.

Despite having more than 500 million users in India and launching its payments service in 2020, WhatsApp remains a relatively small player in the country’s fast-growing digital payments sector, which is powered by the government-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI). According to the latest data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), WhatsApp processed over 130 million transactions in March. In contrast, rivals PhonePe and Google Pay processed more than 10.5 billion and 7.5 billion transactions, respectively, during the same period.

This gap has persisted even after NPCI lifted onboarding restrictions for WhatsApp Pay in late 2024, allowing the service to scale to its full user base in India through a phased rollout.

Still, WhatsApp’s payments activity has shown momentum since early 2025. After the removal of onboarding limits, its UPI transactions more than doubled from around 61 million in January 2025, according to NPCI data. Over the same period, PhonePe and Google Pay grew by approximately 30% and 20%, respectively, while continuing to dominate overall UPI transaction volumes.

The new prepaid recharge feature is part of WhatsApp’s broader strategy to expand financial services and utility offerings within the app in India. Users in the country already use WhatsApp to pay bills, book metro tickets, and access select government services through chat-based interactions, as the Meta-owned company pushes to increase engagement beyond messaging.

WhatsApp has also added a rupee (₹) icon on its home screen to simplify access to its payments section, alongside features such as mobile recharges and peer-to-peer transfers.

Ravi Garg, director of business messaging at Meta India, said the updates are intended to make everyday transactions more seamless within WhatsApp, as the company continues working to add more utility-driven features to the platform.

The development underscores Meta’s broader push to deepen user engagement beyond messaging, even as WhatsApp continues to trail established digital payment platforms in overall transaction volumes.