Kunal Shah, founder of fintech startup CRED, is set to lead WhatsApp globally, taking the reins from Will Cathcart, who is stepping down after nearly seven years at the messaging app. Under the deal, Meta is investing $900 million in CRED for about a 20% stake, valuing the homegrown fintech company at roughly $4.5 billion after the investment.
Shah’s appointment as WhatsApp head has triggered mixed reactions online, with tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg praising his builder mindset and AI savvy, while some see it as Meta’s attempt to scale WhatsApp beyond messaging, particularly into payments and AI commerce.
WhatsApp’s potential pivot to payments:
“WhatsApp has already maxed out its business product in India (no other country’s consumer or regulatory bodies would permit or tolerate the level of spam India deals with on WhatsApp) as well as its ads product (there are ads even between stories now, ffs, in a private messaging app). The only lever that is yet to be maxed out is its payments product, which launched in India a few years back. Considering the growth of India’s digital microtransaction economy and corresponding consumer habits, it’s tempting to consider that WhatsApp has the chance to outdo every payment product in the region.” — @sugandhanisa [Link]
“The $900M investment is not only for Kunal, it’s for the intellectual property he brings about India’s fintech (a headache for global executives everywhere) and Indian consumer habits, from the homegrown CRED. It’s actually a small price considering UPI hit ~230B transactions last year, 33% increase y-o-y. I surmise WhatsApp is planning to become a full-blown payments product. Messaging + microtransactions has anyway been the trend in Indian consumer products.” — @sugandhanisa [Link]
“Zuck wants WhatsApp Pay to become default payment app in India, and WhatsApp already has distribution. It needs user behaviour to change, and they’re not looking for revenue streams in the medium term. Perfect scenario for Kunal Shah.” — @mxtaverse [Link]
One user on X also drew parallels with Chinese super app WeChat, which has over 1 billion users. While WeChat Pay has gained traction in China, WhatsApp Pay has failed to replicate that scale in India and is well behind local rivals such as PhonePe and Google Pay in terms of UPI market share.
According to data from the National Payments Corporation of India, PhonePe’s UPI market share stood at 46.2% in May, compared to Google Pay’s 32.7%. By comparison, CRED held a 0.7% share, and WhatsApp owned 0.6%. This gap indicates significant headroom for WhatsApp’s growth in India, one of the world’s largest payments markets.
Commenting on his appointment, Shah himself said that the “delta between WhatsApp today and its full potential is massive.” [Link]
“Kunal Shah is hired as WhatsApp CEO. And honestly, that tells me where WhatsApp wants to grow next, not in messaging but in…
Source link
Disclaimer
We strive to uphold the highest ethical standards in all of our reporting and coverage. We blogs.grocliq.com want to be transparent with our readers about any potential conflicts of interest that may arise in our work. It’s possible that some of the investors we feature may have connections to other businesses, including competitors or companies we write about. However, we want to assure our readers that this will not have any impact on the integrity or impartiality of our reporting. We are committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news and information to our audience, and we will continue to uphold our ethics and principles in all of our work. Thank you for your trust and support.
Website Upgradation is going on for any glitch kindly connect at [email protected]
