This story is from March 21, 2018

WhatsApp Pay risks financial data of Indians: Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma

Sharma spoke to TOI and said that tech companies like WhatsApp will put India's financial data at risk which can be misused in multiple ways.
WhatsApp Pay risks financial data of Indians: Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma
Sharma spoke to TOI and said that tech companies like WhatsApp will put India's financial data at risk which can be misused in multiple ways.
BENGALURU: As social media giant Facebook faces a backlash over data harvesting by Cambridge Analytica, a voter analytics company, homegrown payments firm Paytm's founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma used the opportunity to raise security issues around WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook. Currently, WhatsApp is testing peer to peer (P2P) payments in India on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
It is in beta stage and not available to everyone.
Sharma spoke to TOI and said that tech companies like WhatsApp will put India's financial data at risk which can be misused in multiple ways. The Paytm founder had recently alleged that Facebook was arm-twisting the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to get preferential treatment. He said companies like WhatsApp will not share any data with the Indian government if a situation arises, as had happened recently with the markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).
"WhatsApp has been given a free hand on multiple fronts for its beta launch and it is walking away from any accountability since some banks have taken the underwriting for any potential loss. It is more about data usage than data leakage. We are seeing how a company like Facebook is impacting democratic processes using users' data. It is scary what they can do with financial records of Indians," Sharma said. Earlier TOI reported when Sharma publicly spoke about rules being relaxed for WhatsApp Pay here. The umbrella payments body NPCI had come out with a statement that it will ensure everyone adheres to rules before a complete launch.
This is not the first time Sharma's strained relations with Facebook have evoked his vexed statements. Back in 2015, when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was trying to launch Free Basics here, Sharma had registered a similar protest. As per internet activists, Free Basics violates net neutrality norms which essentially is about equal access of internet to all users. Zuckerberg had even reached out to Sharma for discussions but Facebook's Free Basics eventually failed here in the face of rising resistance from various stakeholders.
Paytm has raised capital from China's Alibaba and Japan's SoftBank as well, a contentious point which has been debated publicly. Sharma maintained the company keeps all its data in India and is open to sharing it if required. "Banks which are partnering with WhatsApp on UPI only have certain data sets with them while WhatsApp has the entire data of Indians transacting which is going out of the country," he said. The Paytm founder said he was hopeful that the Indian authorities will take cognisance of the matter. Dilip Asbe, MD & CEO, NPCI said he would not be talking to the media on this issue.
The Noida-based Paytm is one of the largest players in the digital payments space, having started as a wallet provider. Over the past 12-18 months, the company has been diversifying at a staggering pace with ambitions to become full stack financial services players. Entry of foreign giants like Facebook owned WhatsApp and Google has disrupted the existing state of play in domestic payments landscape.
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