Manesh Mahatme, the executive in charge of WhatsApp’s Indian payments division, has departed Meta Platforms-owned WhatsApp to work for Amazon India, a source told Reuters on Thursday.
The departure of Mahatme comes at a crucial moment for WhatsApp, which is attempting to grow its payment capabilities while competing against more seasoned rivals like Walmart’s PhonePe, Ant Group-backed Paytm, and Alphabet’s Google Pay.
In India, WhatsApp Pay’s largest market with more than half a billion users overall, the firm obtained regulatory authority to increase its payments to 100 million users during his stint there.
According to the source, Mahatme has joined the Indian e-commerce section of Amazon.com as product director.
In April 2021, he began working at WhatsApp Pay. According to his LinkedIn page, Mahatme served on the board of Amazon Pay India from 2014 and 2021.
According to a statement released by WhatsApp, Mahatme has significantly increased the adoption of WhatsApp Payments in India. The company also stated that the payment service is “a priority for Meta” and that it would continue to evolve and grow as part of its larger initiatives.
A request for comment from Amazon was not answered.
This year, WhatsApp introduced cashback incentives to get more Indians to join its peer-to-peer payments service, but legal restrictions on the amount of people that may use it mean that it faces fierce competition from rivals.
