WhatsApp Pay India head departs after only four months in the top job

Vinay Choletti has quit as head of WhatsApp Pay after only four months in the top job. Choletti had been heading WhatsApp Pay after Manesh Mahatme had quit the firm in September. Abhijit Bose, WhatsApp’s head of India, and Rajiv Aggarwal, Director Public Policy, Meta India, have resigned from their positions last month. Ajit Mohan, the head of Meta in India, had also stepped down from his role to join Snap.

“Today (December 13) was my last day at WhatsApp Pay and as I sign off, I can proudly say that watching the scale and the influence of WhatsApp in India has been a humbling experience. The last one year personally has been a great learning journey and the excitement of being in the frontline and launching some global first payments use cases such as “QR tickets for Bangalore Metro on WhatsApp” was unmatched,” said Choletti in a LinkedIn post.

“I am humbled to see the customer adoption of novel use cases using WhatsApp Pay and I will wear these badges proudly for the rest of my life,” Choletti said in his social media post.

“As I move on to my next adventure, I strongly believe that WhatsApp has the power to phenomenally transform digital payments and financial inclusion in India and I look forward to seeing it leverage its potential in the coming years,” he added.

Late last year, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) approved increasing the user cap for WhatsApp’s payment service from the current 20 million to 40 million users.

WhatsApp received the nod from NPCI in April this year to expand the payment service to 100 million users.