The complete rollout of WhatsApp Payments in India is stuck in a limbo as RBI and the ministry for information technology have raised concerns over Whatsapp’s sharing of payments data with its parent company Facebook.
At the time of launch, some incumbent payment players such as Paytm* had criticised Whatsapp payments, calling the service insecure and that it sent financial data of Indian users to servers outside of India. With over 240 million users in India, Whatsapp is pervasive and is a potential threat to existing payment companies.
After the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, there has been increasing concerns about WhatsApp sharing payments information with its parent.
Deal with Data
Most companies that allow payments over India’s unified payments interface have a parent like WhatsApp has Facebook. Google Tez is run by Google, Flipkart owns PhonePe, Paytm has its own UPI platform, and Amazon has Amazon Pay.
Apart from Whatsapp, the rest of the UPI platforms confirmed that they do not share any payment data with their parent companies.
Data stays in India
Under the new RBI guidelines WhatsApp, like other foreign firms, will be asked to set up a server in the country, which is not the case right now. The apex bank said in April that all payment data should reside in India
The data sharing and usage is an issue as much in India as it is global. So now with RBI guidelines, it is clear that data has to reside in India and can be shared with consumer consent.
Timeline to go full-scale live depends on the app provider’s compliance to data localisation. RBI has informed for all large providers going full-scale live on a multibank model once all the compliance requirements are fulfilled.
Business Management 