In the country, just over a week after the message service announced its launch, Brazilian Central Bank suspended Facebook's WhatsApp payments feature, Bloomberg reports.
The central bank said in a statement that it had agreed to ensure competition on the market for the payment system.
Bloomberg reports that the Bank will use suspension in order to evaluate potential risks to payment systems in the country and decide whether WhatsApp is regulatory compliant.
WhatsApp's second largest market suspension is Facebook's payment ambitions' latest setback. The parent Facebook company has striven to gain regulatory approval for the service, preventing a wider range of operations, despite launches in beta in 2018 in India (WhatsApp's largest market).
At the end of last year, Facebook missed its target of delivering a national service. The payment service WhatsApp in Mexico has also been tested
WhatsApp hoped that their payment system might be used by individuals to pay companies as well as to transfer money to individuals. The service is free for people but charges companies a processing fee of 3,99 per cent.
WhatsApp is often the main online presence for many small enterprises in countries such as India and Brazil. According to Bloomberg, more than five million traders worldwide are using the business edition of the app.
Bloomberg reports that the decision of the Brazilian Central Bank surprised WhatsApp since the company was in regular contact with the authority. A month before its launch, WhatsApp launched a small service test in the country.
WhatsApp 's goal in a statement to Bloomberg is to make digital payments possible for every WhatApp user in Brazil, and we shall continue to collaborate with local partners and the Central Bank to do so. It further confirmed that it plans to endorse the instant payment system of the Central Bank scheduled to begin in November.
Brazil's Central Bank asked Mastercard and Visa to stop paying and transferring money through the app and to warn them of being punished for failure to observe it.
