JOIN USSC notice to Facebook on plea against expanding WhatsApp payment facility
The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued notice to the Centre and Facebook on a plea questioning the move to expand WhatsApp payment facility without complying with the RBI guidelines and regulatory norms of Unified Payment Interface (UPI) system.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the Facebook's subsidiary WhatsApp, made a statement that they will not go ahead with the payments’ scheme without complying with all the regulations in force.
A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices Indu Malhotra and Hrishikesh Roy, however, clarified that there will be no stay of the proceedings with respect to the application of WhatsApp by the government, which would be processed in accordance with the law.
The court said the Centre and the WhatsApp may file their reply affidavit as the notice was sent returnable within three weeks on a writ petition filed by NGO, Good Governance Chambers (G2).
The petitioner led by senior advocate Krishnan Venugopal and Deepak Prakash said the payment facility in WhatsApp should not commence as RBI has not yet cleared it.
The petitioner asked the court to ensure the Centre and the RBI did not grant any permission to WhatsApp to expand its operations in the Indian Digital Payment Market through UPI.
"WhatsApp is already operating in the UPI Digital Payment System without localizing data and following mandatory critical guidelines, threatening data privacy and associated concerns in India. Moreover, the WhatsApp platform is prone to security breaches and has been reported several times in the past to have compromised its user’s data for its own financial gains," it claimed.
The petitioner contended that in the wake of the outbreak of Covid-19, granting wide unregulated access of banking information and payment data of users to WhatsApp posed a huge threat to the banking and financial sector of the country.
"If the millions of Indian bank accounts and passwords are compromised through this platform, many users will lose their long-term earnings and it will not be possible to recover this loss," it apprehended.
The petitioner further pointed out Facebook had already invested 5.7 billion US Dollars in Telecommunications and Digital Services platform, (i.e Reliance Jio) against 9.99% stake. This union will give access to the WhatsApp and Facebook huge Indian markets and in turn even larger user Data.