WhatsApp recently rolled out it Payment service in Brazil to help users send and receive money aster and services easier in the country. The service has now been suspended by the Brazilian Central Bank and has order payment companies Visa and MasterCard to halt payments and transfer operation through the network.
According to a report from Bloomberg, the bank’s decision aims to ‘preserve an adequate competitive environment, that ensures the functioning of a payment system that’s interchangeable, fast, secure, transparent, open and cheap.’
This is coming after two years of testing the payment feature and affects WhatsApp’s biggest market outside of India.
‘Our goal is to provide digital payments to all WhatsApp users in Brazil using an open model and we will continue to work with local partners and the Central Bank to make this possible,’ a WhatsApp spokesperson told Bloomberg.
Bloomberg also reported that WhatsApp was surprised by the Brazillian central bank’s decision, since the company had been in regular contact with the authority prior to the service launch.
“Our goal is to provide digital payments to all WhatsApp users in Brazil using an open model and we will continue to work with local partners and the Central Bank to make this possible,” WhatsApp said in a statement given to Bloomberg. It added that it plans to support the central bank’s instant-payment system, which is scheduled to launch in November.
The company is also reported to be in talks with the authorities in order to restore the payment feature in the country.