India, the world’s biggest open technology market, allows Facebook to start operating its WhatsApp payment service.

With this, WhatsApp pay can go live using homegrown, multibank, Unified Payments Interface, said in a statement by the National Payments Corporation of India yesterday. The United States firm can gradually start expanding its UPI base starting with more than 20 million users. Facebook is testing WhatsApp payments in India for some time in India, but regulatory hurdles have kept the application’s pilot project confined to a small number of users.

India’s payment market is populated with domestic pioneer Paytm, Alphabet Inc.’s Google Pay, Walmart Inc’s PhonPe, Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Pay and heft startups, where WhatsApp has the Potential for completing with the leaders and reshape digital payments in India, a market penned to grow to a $1 trillion by 2023.

Unlike its competitors, WhatsApp will be able to accumulate customers for its payment service organically due to its immense popularity as a messenger application in India. WhatsApp has its largest market bank in India, with Facebook being important as ever, it is finding newer areas to adding new users for a lucrative market growth, wherein the United States and European market has become saturated.

Earlier this year, Facebook purchased a 9.99 percent stake in Jio Platforms, Mukesh Ambani own digital services firm, and Facebook has been open about its ambition of building a large commerce business in India with WhatsApp messaging rolling at the centre.

Analysts believe that Facebook’s partnership with Jio will help in nagivating the country’s regulatory environment. Regulators have blocked some of the previous efforts by Facebook in India, which include a programme offering free internet access to a limited number of websites.

Adding commerce features in recent years, WhatsApp has also included product catalogs and shops where small businesses can promote and sell goods directly through the application. Payments, being a key part of transaction enablement, the renowned messaging application is also eyeing on the product catalogue as a race starter for small businesses to other Facebook services, like the advertising and customer service tools.

Facebook executives foresee WhatsApp serving as one-stop-shop for the Indian small businesses, who can sell goods and interact with customers on a service ranging for over hundreds of millions of people already using it. The executives hope to replicate the plan in other markets like Brazil, for bringing payments with efforts for regulatory challenges.