WhatsApp Pay India head quits, joins Amazon

BENGALURU, Sept 22 (Reuters): The head of WhatsApp's India payment business, Manesh Mahatme, has quit after more than a year with the Meta Platforms-owned company to join Amazon India, a source told Reuters on Thursday.

Mahatme's exit comes at a critical time for Whatsapp, which is seeking to ramp up its payments service in a highly competitive market and lock horns with more established payers such as Alphabet Inc's Google Pay, Ant Group-backed Paytm and Walmart's PhonePe.

During his stint at WhatsApp Pay, the company won regulatory approval to more than double its payments offering to 100 million users in India, its biggest market with more than half a billion users overall.

Mahatme has joined as director of product in the e-commerce division of Amazon.com Inc in India, the source said.

He joined WhatsApp Pay in April 2021. Mahatme was previously on the board of Amazon Pay India between 2014 and 2021, according to his LinkedIn profile.