Whatsapp Payments💸, India's role in Metaverse💻, Crypto Bill🙅🏻♀️
WhatsApp to adopt 500 villages, India to play a huge part in metaverse, Cryptocurrency bill may not be introduced, Funding Deals & more.
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WhatsApp to adopt 500 villages enabling them with digital payment tools💸
WhatsApp announced its pilot program of adopting 500 villages across Karnataka and Maharashtra aiming to empower villagers with access to digital payments through ‘payments on WhatsApp’.
Started from October 15 this year, the pilot was called ‘Digital Payments Utsav’ launched in Kyathanahalli village in Mandya district of Karnataka, wherein on-ground facilitators familiarised villagers with various aspects of digital payments including - signing up for UPI, setting up a UPI account and safety best practices of using digital payments.
The pilot was successful with villagers beginning to adopt WhatsApp as a mode of payment. The village-grocery store or the beauty-parlour owner and scores of other people and small and medium businesses - are now accepting and receiving payments digitally using ‘payments on WhatsApp’.
Additionally, WhatsApp has equipped its main camera to scan QR codes, adding another layer of convenience for users of payments on WhatsApp, targeting access to 20 million QR-accepting stores in the country.
India to play a huge part in building metaverse: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg😎
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said India is going to play a huge part in building the metaverse, helped by the country’s huge talent pool of developers and creators, and its entrepreneurial spirit.
In Zuckerberg’s vision, people will meet and communicate by entering virtual environments, whether they’re talking with colleagues in a boardroom or hanging out with friends in different corners of the world.
Zuckerberg said that India is on track to have the largest app developer base in the world by 2024, and already has one of the largest Spark AR developer communities. He added that the online gaming sector in India has seen a lot of growth over the past few years and Meta’s investment in gaming in the country keeps growing as it looks at how it's going to take shape in the metaverse.
Meta is hoping to double up its social-media user base of more than three billion people into an audience that will embrace immersive digital experiences.
Meta Platforms said it will expand its partnership with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to provide a curriculum on digital safety and online well-being and augmented reality (AR) for over 10 million students.
Hot Shorts⚡
Uni, a credit and payments-focused fintech startup, has raised $70 million in a Series A round led by General Catalyst.
JusPay Technologies Pvt Ltd, which operates a payments technology platform, has raised $60 million in its Series C funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund.
Plix, a clean-plant-based nutrition company, has raised $5 million in a Series A round led by Guild Capital and RPSG Capital Ventures.
Third Wave Coffee, based in Bengaluru, has raised $6 million in its Series A funding round.
Cryptocurrency bill may not be introduced in the winter session🙅🏻♀️
After all the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt), it turns out the cryptocurrency bill may not be introduced in the winter session of Parliament after all.
The issues being debated include the need for wider consultation on the bill, including seeking comments from the public, and whether the central bank digital currency (CBDC) to be introduced by the Reserve Bank of India should be part of this bill or dealt with under the RBI Act.
The Indian government had a strong stance against cryptocurrencies at the beginning of this year and suggested that it could even go on to impose a blanket ban. Since then, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman showed the intent of regulating crypto and even classifying it as a digital asset.
It’s worth mentioning that India is one of the biggest cryptocurrency markets in the world. A recent report suggested that the country has more than 10 crore crypto owners, while homegrown crypto exchange platforms have maintained that around 2 crore Indians have invested in cryptocurrencies.
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