India to Use WhatsApp to Access Digital ID Documents

India’s government has said its citizens will be able to access various official documents through the popular messaging app WhatsApp, a report said Tuesday (May 24).

This will come with the integration with the country’s Digilocker digital documentation initiative into WhatsApp. With more than 487 million users, WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in India.

The report notes how integral Meta’s WhatsApp is to so many people, with more reliance on it to do more things in life. The report from Social Media Today noted that Meta would like WhatsApp to be as essential in India as WeChat is in China, where people need it to show their health status through barcodes in the app to get onto public transport or to travel.

“Many people outside China either still haven’t heard of WeChat or they think it’s the country’s equivalent of popular messaging service WhatsApp or social media giant Facebook,” the South China Morning Post wrote. “For many people in China, WeChat is much more — it is not an overstatement to say it’s an indispensable part of their everyday lives.”

Meta is looking to capitalize on that with additions like bill paying, money exchange and shopping.

But Messenger has not gotten beyond a messaging platform, though, which the report said has led to slower growth in the West.

Social media in India is evolving still, so Meta has more opportunity to bolster messaging in the country.

See also: WhatsApp Offers Cloud-Based API to Businesses

Meta has also been trying to woo more businesses to the app, through things like adding free cloud-based API services.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement at a recent event, saying this would help businesses add the services more easily, building on WhatsApp to customize experiences and help out with response times.