Will Kunal Shah manage to unlock WhatsApp’s payments dream?

A COLD EMAIL and a casual call from Meta’s chief product officer Chris Cox. That’s what led to one of the most surprising announcements of recent times in India’s startup ecosystem. On June 22, it was announced that serial entrepreneur and leading investor Kunal Shah will be stepping down from CRED, his second venture, to join Meta and lead its messaging app, WhatsApp, globally. His role in CRED will be purely that of an investor. As part of the deal, Meta will infuse $900 million into CRED’s Series H through a combination of primary and secondary share purchases at a valuation of $4.5 billion. Neither Shah nor Meta will have a board seat at CRED. In its previous fundraising round in June 2025, CRED saw $75 million being pumped in for a $3.5 billion valuation, a write-down from $6.4 billion in 2022. So why does Meta want Kunal Shah? India is Meta’s largest market by user base. It has the world’s largest audience base on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. However, the high adoption hasn’t yet translated into monetisation. WhatsApp joined the payments party late. Even though actively used by businesses, leaks in closing transactions remain a challenge. Meanwhile, WhatsApp is embroiled in a legal battle before the Supreme Court over an order issued by the Competition Commission of India. The case stems from the messaging platform’s 2021 privacy policy update, which allows the sharing of certain user data with other Meta products and services, raising concerns over user privacy and competition. Full visibility of user behaviour across Meta’s Family of Apps (FoA) could unlock huge value for the company. Shah’s access and stature in the fintech ecosystem are expected to come in handy on the policy and regulation front. Soon after his joining, WhatsApp announced the phased rollout of username-based discovery, akin to Instagram handles. While WhatsApp claims it to be a privacy feature, the move could again stir up regulatory and government concerns over risks to digital users, given the anonymity it brings. In Shah, Meta sees a leader who marries deep expertise in building payment platforms — honed during his stint at Freecharge (his previous startup) — with a proven ability to create and scale new consumer categories, demonstrated at CRED, that caters to users with strong credit profiles. Shah creates a great launchpad for WhatsApp, which has not been able to move the needle despite obvious advantages, says Ujjwal Chaudhry, partner and global co-head of consumer internet practice at management consulting and financing advisory firm Analysys Mason. Meta also might be betting on Shah’s “Indian-ness” to crack the market. “With more than 500 million users in India, WhatsApp’s biggest challenges and opportunities are centred here. While we have many Indian-origin CEOs globally, they moved out of India a lot earlier in life; Kunal is someone who lives and breathes here. So, the distinction is important,” says Chaudhry. PhonePe and Google Pay together account for nearly 78-79% of India’s UPI payments. For challengers, the race is not merely for transaction volumes but for the opportunity to build broader financial services businesses and unlock targeted advertising revenues. However, NPCI, for now, is holding off its decision to cap players’ market share at 30%. That makes changing user preferences a hard ask. Globally, ‘other revenue’ from FoA has seen healthy growth with paid messaging from WhatsApp and Meta Verified subscriptions together accounting for $862 million in 2025, a 50% increase compared to 2024. Meta would be betting on Shah’s ingenuity and insights and how he makes good on what he wrote on X while announcing his move: “While it’s come very far, the delta between WhatsApp today and its full potential is massive. I look forward to working with Mark, Chris, and the leadership across Meta for the next step in WhatsApp’s journey”. CRED’s future “We have a talented team, a strong foundation, and a meaningful opportunity ahead. I’m excited to build CRED’s next chapter with this team,” Miten Sampat, who has led CRED’s strategy and finance functions since 2020, said on June 22 as he assumed the role of interim CEO. The latest capital infusion could give the eight-year-old company, which claims to have 17 million active users and ₹3,200 crore (~$325 million) in revenue, the financial firepower to deepen and broaden its offerings. Given its affluent user base, CRED has been looking to deepen its play on the merchant- as well as the wealth management side. For instance, it recently received a payment aggregator licence from the RBI and has started offering a curated set of liquid funds on the platform for investments through tie-ups with large AMCs. To quote Sampat, CRED continues to remain focussed on building value products and deepen users’ trust by helping them make better financial decisions. That will strengthen CRED as an institution for the long term.

Will Kunal Shah manage to unlock WhatsApp’s payments dream?

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