Manesh Mahatme, the head of WhatsApp’s payments business in India, has left the Meta Platforms-owned company after around 18 months and is reportedly set to move to Amazon, where he previously worked. Last year, Mahatme joined WhatsApp from Amazon where he served as a director and board member of Amazon Pay India for almost seven years, leading product, development and growth teams.

Mahatme’s exit comes at a crucial time for Whatsapp, which is expanding its payment service in India and competing with established players such as Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm.

A meta spokesman confirmed that Mahatme has left the company and a query to Amazon remained unanswered at press time.

“Manesh (Mahatme) has played an important role in expanding access to ‘Payments on WhatsApp’ in India and we wish him every success in his future endeavors,” the meta spokesman said. “Payments on WhatsApp are a priority for Meta and we will continue to innovate and drive as part of our broader effort to bring the ‘next 500 million Indians’ into the digital payments ecosystem.”

WhatsApp, along with Reliance’s Jio platforms, also recently launched the online shopping experience. It gave those companies a boost in the arm and would help them take on other e-commerce companies like Amazon and Flipkart. The partnership gives JioMart access to over 487 million WhatsApp users in India. In a global first, JioMart on WhatsApp will allow users in India, including those who have never shopped online before, to seamlessly browse JioMart’s entire grocery catalogue. You can add items to cart and make payment without leaving WhatsApp chat.

Mahatme also played a role in helping WhatsApp gain regulatory approval to more than double the number of users of its payment service in India to 100 million. In April of this year, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) allowed Meta-owned WhatsApp to add sixty million users to its payment service, bringing the total number of consumers that the unified payment interface, or UPI-based feature, can offer to 100 million increased .

In November 2020, the NPCI gave WhatsApp permission to go live on UPI in the multi-bank model in stages, initially starting with 20 million users. The number was later increased to 40 million last year. After the cap was expanded to 40 million users, WhatsApp India director of payments Manesh Mahatme had said his company would work with the NPCI to expand its user base.

Following Mahatme’s appointment last year, Abhijit Bose, head of WhatsApp India, said that Mahatme had been one of the key innovators driving the growth of digital payments in India over the past decade and his experience will benefit the company help maximize the impact and payment scale on whatsapp.

Mahatme brings 17 years of digital financial services and payments experience at Citibank, Airtel Money and Amazon. He was also instrumental in building and scaling Amazon India’s payment experience and marketplace business platform. He graduated from BITS, Pilani (Electronics) and SP Jain, Mumbai (Management).