MercadoLibre’s company chief financial officer stated for Reuters that currently, the company is in the test phase as on of the partners processing payments in Brazil. The payments tool is thought to enable WhatsApp users in the region to find a company’s account through means of a directory service and to carry out in-app transactions with either debit or credit cards.
Details on how advanced the test phase is had not been provided, nor indications on what the potential revenue generation for Mercado Pago, the company’s financial arm, would be. Despite this, enterprise officials believe that this marks an opportunity for them to leverage WhatsApp in an efficient manner and generate increased sales, alongside improved customer contacts.
Together with Indonesia and India, Brazil represents one of the biggest markets for WhatsApp.
Early in December 2022, The Central Bank of Brazil announced it will permit changes to the local payment arrangement regulation of Mastercard to enable further support for WhatsApp payments as part of the Facebook Pay Programme.
Prior to that, Meta announced in November 2022 that it is set to launch a payments tool in the largest economy in Latin America to allow WhatsApp users to message and buy from a business directly in the chat. Amongst the companies named by WhatsApp as having the required technical integration was Mercado Pago, in addition to several others that were also taking part in production testing. The directory was announced to have the goal of enabling users to find, message, and buy from businesses in the same chat, whereas the payments tool that is now tested is believed to help make possible in-app transactions with either credit or debit cards. Earlier in the same month, the Central Bank of Brazil enabled transfers via PIX from other financial institutions through the bank’s WhatsApp channel.
In May 2021, Brazil-based Mastercard cardholders were enabled to send and receive money via WhatsApp, with users having cards issued by Banco Inter, Itaú, Nubank, and Sicredi able to use the peer-to-peer (P2P) payments WhatsApp service. The announcement followed the April 2021 news that WhatsApp had gained regulatory approval from the country’s central bank to reissue its payments service in Brazil, which had been previously suspended in June 2020 in less than two weeks following its launch due to regulatory pushbacks.
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