Facebook-owned-WhatsApp has launched its digital payment service WhatsApp-pay in Brazil.

Facebook has acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014. The messaging app had 2 billion users as of February.

It has 400 million users in India. It has been testing its payments service in India-based on UPI – with about a million users. The company had started its Beta testing in India, In 2018.

This WhatsApp-pay allows users to send and receive money online. It will be available on both iPhone and android in the countries Brazil, India, Indonesia, Germany, The U.K., The U.S., and Mexico.

The service is free for consumers, but businesses will be charged a fee similar to what they would pay when accepting a credit card transaction.

Users need to link a credit or debit card to their WhatsApp account, and transactions are secured with either fingerprint or a six-digit PIN.

In a Facebook post on Monday, its CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Brazil is the first country where it is widely rolling out payments in WhatsApp.

Last year Facebook said “Payments on WhatsApp are beginning to roll out to people across Brazil beginning today and we look forward to bringing it to everyone as we go forward,” the company said in the post.

WhatsApp says its digital payments are an open model that will allow it to add more partners in the future.

In a Facebook post on Monday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Brazil is the first country where it is widely rolling out payments in WhatsApp.

“Today we are starting to launch payment for people using WhatsApp in Brazil. We are making sending and receiving money as easy as sharing photos, adding that small businesses will also be able to make sales right within WhatsApp.”

“To do this we are building on Facebook Pay, which provides a secure and consistent way to make payments across our apps,” He said.

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg said – ” To start, we will support debit and credit cards from Banco do Brasil, Nubank, and Sicredi on the visa and Mastercard networks and we are working with Cielo, the leading payment processor in Brazil. We have built an open model to model to welcome more partners in the future,” He added.

The company announced that it is making it easy for users to send money to their physically distant loved ones.

“We’re making sending money to loved ones as easy as sending a message, which could not be more important as people are physically distant from one another,” the company said in a blog post.

“Because payments on WhatsApp are enabled by Facebook Pay, in the future we want to make it possible for people and businesses to use the same card information across Facebook’s family of apps.”

since Company has its rivals in the country include Softbank-backed Paytm, Flipkart’s PhonePe, and Google Pay, it has delayed a full-fledged launch in India.