The launching of much awaited new payment feature of WhatsApp for India i.e WhatsApp Payments which was expected to be launched at the end of this year, has been reported to be delayed. The reason for this delay in the launch of WhatsApp pay is the concern raised by Indian Government over the data localisation compliance of WhatsApp.
A media report says, these concerns are raised by the Government of India and Apex financial regulator Reserve Bank of India. These concerns will cause the delay in launch of this new payment service by WhatsApp.
In June this year, RBI raised issues over the processing and storage of the WhatsApp pay users data and said that the processing of data can be done outside India, but after processing, the data need to be bring back in India within 24 hours. Also the data must be removed from the foreign systems where it will be processed.
According to reports, a third party security audit is going on by a top consulting firm of RBI. Although WhatsApp didn’t reply for a query regarding recent development in the security concerns, but their Global CEO Will Cathcart said, they are working to comply with data localisation and to sort out these security concerns.
There are more than 400 million WhatsApp users in India, which makes India the largest market of WhatsApp users. Taking into account this, WhatsApp officials are taking this matter seriously and want to resolve these data processing and storage concerns raised by the Indian Government as soon as possible.
What are these concerns:
In July this year Will Cathcart visited India and announced that they have launched a beta testing version of WhasApp payments and are planning to launch this service fully by the end of year 2019.
In September NPCI i.e National Payments Corporation of India asked WhatsApp that, to get the final approval for launching WhatsApp Pay, they have to change its policy. WhatsApp were asked to change the framework of data compliance.
The Reserve Bank of India had made it compulsory for all payment services to store the important payment data in India only. According to directive issued by RBI in 2018, it was made compulsory that if the payment data is processed outside India, then it should be brought back within 24 hours to systems which are located in India and also should be removed the the foreign systems.