WhatsApp Confirms Appointment of Manesh Mahatme to Lead India Payments Business

Mahatme was previously a senior executive at Amazon where he led the product and engineering teams for Amazon Pay in India.

By Reuters | Updated: 28 June 2021 18:03 IST

WhatsApp Confirms Appointment of Manesh Mahatme to Lead India Payments Business

Photo Credit: LinkedIn/ Manesh Mahatme

Manesh Mahatme also worked earlier with Citigroup and Indian mobile carrier Bharti Airtel

Highlights

WhatsApp has more than 500 million Indian users
WhatsApp also has plans to expand its partnership with banks
Manesh Mahatme will help improve users' payments experience

Facebook-owned WhatsApp messenger said on Monday it was appointing a former Amazon executive as the head of payments in India as it looks to scale the service in its biggest market by users.

Manesh Mahatme, officially director WhatsApp payments - India, will help improve users' payments experience and grow the business, WhatsApp said in a statement, confirming a Reuters newsbreak in March.

Mahatme was previously a senior executive at Amazon where he led the product and engineering teams for US online retailer's payments business, Amazon Pay, in India. He also worked earlier with Citigroup and Indian mobile carrier Bharti Airtel.

[Sponsored] Samsung Galaxy S24: The Ultimate Camera Phone With Smarter On-Device AI

WhatsApp, which has more than 500 million Indian users, last year received a much-delayed approval for the launch of its payments system in the country, but so far its rollout has been capped by regulators at 20 million users.

But it has big ambitions and a deal by Facebook last year to invest $5.7 billion (roughly Rs. 42,350 crores) in billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Jio Platforms digital unit will allow WhatsApp to offer payments services to millions of mom-and-pop stores.

WhatsApp also has plans to expand its partnership with banks in a bid to offer financial services such as pensions and insurance, its India head Abhijit Bose - also a payments industry veteran - said last year.

© Thomson Reuters 2021

We discuss the return of PUBG Mobile, sorry, Battlegrounds Mobile India on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.