Amidst trial run in India, Facebook chooses London as base for WhatsApp Pay

It is more than a year since Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp started its trial for payment services - WhatsApp Pay - in India.

While it is still stuck fulfilling government regulation in the country, the social networking firm has reportedly picked up London and Dublin to launch its mobile payments services.

Both the locations in the UK, according to WhatsApp spokesperson, attract a multicultural workforce for WhatsApp. To drive the payment services, the company has tasked engineers to recruit more than 100 people, as per the FT report.

Since the last couple of years, Facebook has been trying ways to monetise WhatsApp services. It launched WhatsApp for businesses and UPI-powered payment business in India last year.

WhatsApp started a beta trial for its payment services - WhatsApp Pay in India last year.  However, it's restricted to be used by only a million people.

The payment feature has been mired in a slew of problems including fake news menace, circumvention around policy for its payments business and storing users data in local servers.

Last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company is actively working to launch payment services in many other countries. The trial run will end by July.

With close to 300 million users in India, Whatsapp Pay will pose a threat to its rivals - Paytm, Amazon Pay, Google Pay, PhonePe and Truecaller.

Meanwhile, experts anticipate that WhatsApp Pay might in the coming time become a payment gateway for Facebook's social commerce in the future.