WhatsApp plans to offer credit, insurance and pension products to lower-income individuals and those in rural areas in India and help digitize local small and medium-sized businesses as the Facebook service looks to make a digital payments push in its biggest market by users.

The instant messaging app maker has been working with banks — including ICICI, Kotak Mahindra and HDFC — in India for the past year to explore ways to bring financial services to individuals who have yet to become part of the banking population, said Abhijit Bose, WhatsApp’s head in India, at Global Fintech Fest conference, via video chat on Wednesday.

This work over the past year has already proven that banks can leverage WhatsApp’s reach; ICICI Bank and Kotak Mahindra have reached more than 3 million new users, said Bose, who announced that the app is now planning to work with additional partners to bring insurance, micro-pension and credit to lower-wage workers and the informal economy over the next year-and-a-half. WhatsApp will pilot several programs with partners to test solutions to bring these services to people, he said. “Based on the results, we will co-invest and scale.

Even a small conversion of the demand will translate into an infusion of significant savings into the financial system,” he said. “Over the next two years, we are committing to opening in entrepreneurial ways we never have before. We will launch many experiments.”

Banks today face a number of roadblocks, such as the level of presence they have in a small city or town and their heavy reliance on middlemen to sell financial services that have limited the number of people they can reach, said Bose.

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