WhatsApp to come clean on Data Sovereignty issue in Public

Foreign companies like Google, Facebook and WhatsApp have been given leeway to operate their service in India. At the same time they must abide to the law of land, all the players have to follow the government’s stringent rule. The UPI enabled platform owned by Facebook has drawn support as well as allegations from digital payment space.

With over 250 million strong userbase of WhatsApp could not have imagined for more buzz than the present scenario. Vijay Shekhar Sharma tweets about WhatsApp along with facebook for accusations of regulatory manipulation with the alleged wrong tactics to promote, WhatsApp enabled UPI payment platform product in India. Also, told Facebook as the evilest firm in the world.

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the umbrella organisation for all retail payment systems in India, has taken the matter to the table and announced that every participating organisation has to follow well defined UPI guidelines and stick to the aim of making the platform interoperable. NPCI also emphasised that any UPI-enabled app can only go for mass public launch when it incorporates interoperability, like the ability to send money across any UPI ID, allowing collect requests for customers and generation of BharatQR codes, are required for going live in the final stage.

Further, NPCI also clear the air on, that the WhatsApp UPI beta launch is limited user base of 1 million and provided with low per transaction limit. Four banks will join the multi-bank BHIM UPI model in phases and full feature of WhatsApp payment shall be released after the beta test is successful. NPCI clarified on once the app goes live, it will have to bring in all the features of UPI as stated in the guidelines.

As the guideline says, is an optional feature, about the app passcode, which is not present in WhatsApp unlike other payment applications. Soon after the NPCI statement, Sharma, Founder PayTM tweets further saying that “I hope full obligation of BHIM like security and tx data sovereignty(Data sovereignty is the concept that information which has been converted and stored in binary digital form is subject to the laws of the country in which it is located) too will be implemented before full launch.”

WhatsApp must implement login and password like all other BHIM UPI apps. This statement is also silent on other issues such as the requirement to send SMS notifications for every UPI transaction. We hope that future rollout will be fully compliant with all the guidelines. We wait to hear NPCI views on some of these missing aspects,” said a Paytm spokesperson.
 

Now a question is, if WhatsApp is a messenger application, why they have preferred to keep the application open, what is advantage and disadvantage too, by requiring the mobile PIN for the transaction. Secondly, did WhatsApp was given some form of leeway on the user experience for digital payment space, because of the sheer size of the platform?

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