Meta (via WhatsApp) & Jio (via JoMart) are changing online shopping forever 🛍; Affirm's strong earnings & promising growth initiatives 🚀; Indonesia’s largest tech firm made massive crypto move 🤯

Good Morning FinTech, 31 August

Good day Everyone,

Happy Wednesday and happy last day of summer! Today’s issue is one of the most interesting ones this week so far. We’ll be looking at how Meta (via WhatsApp) & Jio (via JoMart) are changing online shopping forever (it could be the first step of WhatsApp becoming the Super App in India), Affirm's strong earnings & promising growth initiatives (if you’re in BNPL, these are great hints where you should be looking at), and Indonesia’s largest tech firm making a massive crypto move (& why it makes a ton of sense). Let’s jump straight into the amazing stuff:

Meta (via WhatsApp) & Jio (via JoMart) are changing online shopping forever 🛍

The partnership 🤝 Social media giant Meta META 0.00%↑ has partnered with JioMart, a retail joint venture between tech giant Jio Platforms and Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries. WhatsApp users in India can now easily buy groceries within the chat app.

The launch follows Meta and JioMart beginning to test an integration with select users two years ago and is reportedly one of the first shopping experiences on WhatsApp.

More on this 👉 Customers in India will be able to browse JioMart’s entire grocery catalog on WhatsApp, add items to a cart and make payments via Unified Payments Interface (UPI), India’s mobile bank-to-bank instant payment system.

WhatsApp, which is used by about 500 million Indians each month, got the approval to extend its UPI-powered payments service to 100 million users in the country earlier this year after several delays and setbacks.

Why is this important? 🤔 WhatsApp and JioMart partnership marks the beginning of the end of shopping as we know it. More importantly, it could be the first step of WhatsApp becoming the Super App in India🇮🇳 (which would be massive for Meta). Here’s the takeaway: