FreeCharge users can now use WhatsApp to transfer money. Here’s why it’s important.

A smartphone user in Kerala, India. Photo credit: Romtomtom.

WhatsApp’s fast approaching the possibility of becoming more than just a chat app in India.

On Friday, one of the country’s largest payment enablers FreeCharge announced a new feature with the messaging app. If two WhatsApp users have approved a certain setting within the FreeCharge app, they can now transfer money to each other while chatting by typing “FC” after the amount of money. “200FC”, for example, will transfer INR200. The feature is activated by tweaking certain privacy settings so FreeCharge can read what’s written in a WhatsApp message. While it’s something that any developer can include in their Android app, its adoption by a payment enabler the size of Freecharge is what makes it exciting.

WhatsApp is the most used messaging app in the country, but most of its Indian users depend on cash so it’s never had a distinct way to make money. On the other hand, FreeCharge’s goal is to get Indians off cash and using digital payments. Between the two, the feature has the potential to be a big deal.

It might even signal – if I may be so bold – the push that’s needed for the much-awaited arrival of India’s golden WeChat era.

Oh, the places you’ll go

In China, WeChat is owned by Tencent, which also operates its own payments arm, WeChat Payments. The payment arm competes with ecommerce giant Alibaba’s Alipay, but that hasn’t stopped it from being immensely successful.

WeChat has nearly 700 million users and can be used for all sorts of things, from in-store payments to taking out loans.

While a similar monopoly doesn’t seem possible – and maybe not even desirable – in India, the WhatsApp-FreeCharge feature is a step in a similar, chat-and-pay direction.

Snapdeal, which is a part of the trifecta competing for India’s ecommerce customers (the other two are Flipkart and Amazon) bought FreeCharge in August 2015 in what is believed to be the most expensive startup deal in India’s history.

The two make quite the power couple.

FreeCharge then partnered with Fino, which was one of the 11 companies to receive a license to act like a bank and hold money. Since then, FreeCharge has moved fast, and can be used for everything from buying bus tickets to paying for utilities.

On the other end is WhatsApp, which announced 800 million active users across the globe in April, and consistently claims that India is its largest market.

Not over until it’s over