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Facebook owned messaging platform WhatsApp on Friday informed Supreme Court that it will be abide by the norms of the Reserve Bank Of India (RBI) before fully launching its payments service in the country.
Senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Arvind Datar, appearing for WhatsApp, told the bench that they are only having a trial run, which is likely to be completed by July and that it won't launch payments service without complying with norms.
The company's statement came before the court when the bench, headed by Justice R F Nariman, was hearing a petition seeking directions for the messaging platform to follow RBI norms for its payment service.
In 2018, WhatsApp began piloting its payment service in India; it claims that almost one million people in the country are currently testing the feature. But the formal launch, which was expected to happen at the start of June, has been repeatedly pushed back, pending regulatory approvals and over confusion on data protection laws.
India is the largest market for WhatsApp, accounting for over 200 million user base. During the hearing, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, said that WhatsApp was not complying with data localisation norms, which is evident from the affidavit filled by the RBI.
To this, the bench said that if norms laid down by the RBI are not followed by WhatsApp, then it can be prosecuted. "Don't worry our arms are long enough. They cannot escape the law," it said, adding that the issue requires detailed hearing. The matter was listed for July.
RBI already had issued a circular directing the global payments service to store transaction data of Indian customers in the country itself. The idea was to have unfettered access to all payments data for supervisory purposes.
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