Whatsapp sets up a system to store payment related data in India || Commerce News Guruji

Mobile messaging platform, WhatsApp said on Tuesday that it has created a system to store data related to payments in India, according to the Reserve Bank of India's Data Localization Rules. In a circular issued by the RBI in April, the RBI had said that “All system providers shall ensure that the entire data relating to payment systems operated by them are stored in a system only in India. This data should include the full end-to-end transaction details/information collected/carried/processed as part of the message/payment instruction”. For the overseas part of the transaction, the data may be stored in a foreign country. For this, RBI has given time to companies till October 15, 2018

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"We will store all data related to payments in India only," a spokeswoman for WhatsApp said in a statement. The company is providing payment services in the country on trial basis. Whatsapp said that the payment feature of 10 lakh people is being tested here right now. The company expects that it will soon be able to start payments service across the country. Whatsapp says that this will fulfill the purpose of bringing more people into the scope of financial services. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley met the B P Kanungo, Deputy Governor of RBI, on Monday on data localization norms for global financial companies. Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg, Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar and IT Secretary Ajay Prakash Sahni were also present in this meeting.

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Industry has given a mixed reaction to the RBI order to store payments data in the country. While domestic companies such as Paytm and Phonepay have welcomed it, foreign companies like Google's GooglePay advocated free flow of data. Some international companies have asked for some more time to comply with the rule and also said that they want to store a copy of the data abroad. A government official had recently told that Google has agreed to accept RBI's data storage policy for its payments service.

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