Brazil’s central bank suspended WhatsApp’s payments service on Wednesday, only after a week it first went live in the country. The bank said that it took the decision to “preserve an adequate competitive environment”, and to ensure an “interoperable, fast, secure, transparent, open and inexpensive payment system”. Bloomberg first reported this, and pointed out that Brazil is WhatsApp’s second biggest market with over 120 million users, behind India. "The measure will allow the Central Bank to assess possible risks for the proper functioning of the Brazilian Payment System (SPB),” the bank said. “The possible start or continuity of operations without prior analysis of the Regulator could generate irreparable damage to the SPB, notably with regard to competition, efficiency and data privacy,” it added. Visa and Mastercard have also been ordered to “immediately stop using the WhatsApp application to initiate payments and transfers”. WhatsApp had launched its payments services in Brazil on June 15, which was enabled by Facebook Pay, and allowed users to send and receive money on by linking their WhatsApp accounts to their Visa or Mastercard debit and credit cards, and with local banks including Banco do Brasil, Nubank and Sicredi. Payments processing company, Cielo was handling the transactions. The decision will come as a setback to Facebook, and its WhatsApp payments ambitions in particular, especially since judicial and regulatory scrutiny have already created hurdles for WhatsApp's UPI payments service in India. A WhatsApp spokesperson, in a statement to MediaNama, said that "even as we continue to work with…
