Meta taps Cred's Kunal Shah to lead WhatsApp India, invests $900M in Cred to crack UPI race

Meta is betting on Kunal Shah's consumer-behaviour playbook to revive WhatsApp Pay in India, where it trails PhonePe and Google Pay despite 500M local users. The $900M Cred investment signals a deeper push to convert WhatsApp's 3B global base into a transactional layer.

— Filed Wed, 24 Jun, 2026, 20:33 IST · Source Financial Express (via Wayback) · Updated

Meta appointed Cred founder Kunal Shah to lead WhatsApp and invested $900 million in Cred, betting on his consumer-behaviour expertise to crack India's UPI payments market where WhatsApp Pay trails PhonePe and Google Pay.