Just yesterday while we talked about the launch of WhatsApp Pay, seems that its launch may get deferred. This is because Centre of Accountability and Systematic Change (CASC), a think tank that had filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL), in the Supreme Court last year against WhatsApp Pay, is seeking a rollback of WhatsApp Pay’s pilot project.
As per an interim application that was filed on Monday, CASC had urged the Supreme Court to stop WhatsApp’s trial with 1 million users, also direct the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), to put on the record, that the permission was granted for the trial and also disclose all communication between WhatsApp, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), and itself.
WhatsApp Pay has been designed specifically to run on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), that’s developed by NPCI.
As of now, WhatsApp Pay has been running a pilot with 1 million users for nearly two years. It hasn’t received permission yet, to do a full rollout with all its 400 million Indian users, as it has not yet completed storing data within the country’s borders.
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Also, CASC said that as per RBI’s affidavit to Supreme Court in November, WhatsApp had not fully complied with the rules then.
However, the latest plea by CASC comes after reports had emerged last week, where it said that NPCI had allowed WhatsApp to increase the size of the pilot project to 10 million customers.
As per CASC’s lawsuit last year, it was noted that WhatsApp shouldn’t be granted permission for a full-fledged rollout of its payment service. This was till WhatsApp completed localising all the data, and appointed a grievance officer in India.
Much earlier, CASC had stated in an application that WhatsApp’s related companies have a poor data security record. Also, WhatsApp’s parent company Facebook’s Instagram and Twitter accounts were hacked last week.
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