Application filed in Supreme Court seeking stoppage of WhatsApp Pay trials

By
Asif Iqbal
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Application filed in Supreme Court seeking stoppage of WhatsApp Pay trials

An Application has been filed in the Supreme Court which seeks to hold the paid trail of WhatsApp Pay, it is the pilot project of Facebook. The matter is filed by the Centre for Accountability and Systematic Change (CASC) in the Supreme Court against the Union of India. The Application seeks interim directions from the Bench and the petition was presented by Advocate Archana Pathak Dave. 

The Petitioner seeks the issue of Mandamus by the Court or any other writ or direction to the Respondent to ensure data compliance which has been mandated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The Court had asked the RBI to submit a report about the status of Compliance of RBI Circular by WhatsApp and an affidavit was filed which mentioned about the non-compliance of norms as mandated by RBI, last year. Though the WhatsApp had clandestinely continued with beta testing of payment system for one million users in the Country and the functioning of payment will roll out for more customers. In the Circular mandated in the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) mandated a deadline to comply with data localization rules by 15th October 2018 and submitted that one million users from India cannot be reduced to Guinea Pigs as their data, which includes financial data cannot be stored outside the territory of India which will be contravention in to the circular of RBI. 

The Section 17 and 18 of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act 2007 (PSS Act) gives power to RBI in issuing directions and Section 19 mandates to comply with directions of Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The petitioner highlighted the recent incident of WhatsApp, Pegasus Spyware which inflicted to secure data systems and the Government of France have fined the Apple for USD 27.3 million for intentionally slowly the functioning of older iPhones but no action has been taken against the companies which have scant the privacy of Indians by the Government.

Key-Features:-

  • Pilot payment floated by Facebook.
  • Reference was made to the Pegasus Spyware incident and the need to have a secure system.
  • Without complying with the norms, it induces suspicion and the Court must issue directions against the same.
  • The Application after getting permission from the Central Government and Reserve Bank of India will compete with the companies like PayTm and Google Pay.
  • Shopping catalogue was introduced by WhatsApp in the year 2019 in Countries like Brazil, India Indonesia, Mexico, USA and UK.

Edited by J. Madonna Jephi

Approved & Published – Sakshi Raje

Reference:-

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