Centre for Accountability and Systemic Change (CASC), a think tank that had filed a public interest litigation before the Supreme Court last year against WhatsApp Pay, has sought an immediate rollback of the messaging app’s pilot project.
In an interim application filed on Monday, CASC has urged the apex court to stop WhatsApp’s trial with 1 million users, direct the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to put on record the permission granted for the trial and disclose all communication between WhatsApp, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and itself.
WhatsApp Pay is designed to run on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) developed by NPCI.
UPI allows users to pay others or do business transactions through their bank accounts.
WhatsApp Pay has been running a pilot with 1 million users for nearly two years. It has yet to receive permission to do a full rollout with all its 400 million Indian users because it has not yet completed storing all data within the country’s borders.
CASC said that, according to RBI’s affidavit to Supreme Court in November, WhatsApp had not yet fully complied with the rules.
“It is submitted that 1 million Indians cannot be reduced to guinea pigs. Their sensitive personal data, including financial data cannot be stored outside India in contravention to the RBI Circular,” the application stated.
WhatsApp and RBI did not respond to emails until press time on Monday.
This latest plea by CASC comes after reports emerged last week that NPCI had allowed WhatsApp to increase the size of the pilot project to 10 million customers.
“It is submitted that in any case, there cannot be any blanket permission for trials, and same should be restricted by duration, number of banks involved and monetary limits. WhatsApp on many occasions has claimed compliance with RBI data localization norms, even though RBI’s affidavit clearly proves that it is not the case,” the application stated.
According to CASC’s lawsuit last year, WhatsApp should not be granted permission for a full-fledged rollout of its payment service until the Facebook-owned instant messaging platform completes localising all the data and appoints a grievance officer in India.
On Monday, CASC said in its application that WhatsApp’s related companies have a poor data security record, and parent company Facebook’s own Instagram and Twitter accounts were hacked last week.
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