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Brazil’s central bank has given Facebook-owned WhatsApp the greenlight to relaunch P2P payments in the country nine months after suspending the service.
Last June, Brazil became the first country to get a nationwide rollout of WhatsApp’s long-trailed payments service.
Yet just 10 days later the central bank stepped in to close it down, demanding that Visa and Mastercard suspend launching payments and transfers on WhatsApp.
At the time, Banco Central do Brasil said that the service did not have necessary licenses and raised questions about competition and data privacy.
Now, the bank says it has granted licenses to Facebook, Visa and Mastercard that relate to “the usage of WhatsApp for initiating funds transfers among cardholders from Visa and MasterCard under the Facebook Pay program”.
The WhatsApp service “may bring new perspectives of cost reduction for users of payment services,” says a statement.
Since the initial suspension, the central bank has introduced its own PIX instant payments platform, which lets citizens, companies and government entities make instant payments 24/7/365 through mobile phones, online banking and ATMs.
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