WhatsApp payment service: Trial can’t go on forever, give a timeline, says Supreme Court

Popular messaging app, WhatsApp’s payments services came under fire from the Supreme Court on Friday for carrying on indefinitely its pilot programme. The issue at stake is that overseas firms like WhatsApp need to store all financial data within the country under a Reserve Bank of India notification. The deadline for meeting the norm for local storage of financial data ended on October 18, 2018.

Since WhatsApp’s payments services is still in pilot stage and has not received the permission of National Payments Corporation of India to go live, technically it is not in violation of any guidelines. However, on Friday, the SC took note of a petition filed by an NGO — Centre for Accountability and Systemic Change (CASC) — which has claimed that WhatsApp has not fully complied with the RBI’s circular which prescribed data localisation norms.

Warning WhatsApp that the pilot programme cannot go on indefinitely in violation of RBI norms, the SC said RBI is free to prosecute it for failing to comply with data localisation norms.