The Reserve Bank of India has told the Supreme Court that the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) allowed WhatsApp to “go live” on UPI only after ensuring it was fully compliant with its circular.The central bank also stressed the onus is on the NPCI to respond on the status of compliance of WhatsApp, Google and Amazon with the system rules/procedural guidelines governing the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
In an affidavit, the RBI said: “NPCI is the system provider of UPI and, therefore, comes under the regulatory radar of the RBI. Since it was NPCI that allowed Amazon, Google and WhatsApp to operate under UPI, the responsibility to ensure that these entities comply with all the rules/regulations/guidelines governing UPI lies with the NPCI.”
The RBI added that the NPCI was advised not to permit full scale operations of WhatsApp till the time they are fully compliant with the requirements of the RBI directions.“NPCI subsequently allowed ‘go live’ of WhatsApp on UPI only after ensuring that WhatsApp was fully compliant with the circular,” it said in the affidavit.
The RBI issued directions through a circular on April 6, 2018 on storage of payment system data and not data sharing or privacy. It said it has not issued any instructions on data sharing by Third-Party App Providers (TPAPs) or the participants of UPI, and matters related to data privacy and data sharing come under the domain of the Centre.
