Will abide by norms for payments launch: WhatsApp

NEW DELHI: Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp on Friday informed Supreme Court that it will abide by the norms of 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 services 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 payments service. In 2018, WhatsApp began piloting its payments 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.