UPI Platforms Asked to Respond Over Concerns of Unauthorised Data Sharing

The Supreme Court on Monday sought the response of WhatsApp India, Facebook, Google Pay, Amazon Pay and the Union Government on a plea seeking directions to ensure that data collected by Unified Payment Interface(UPI) platforms is not shared with a parent company or any other third party under any circumstances.

Senior Advocate Krishnan Venugopal reminded the court about a prior instance of WhatsApp's Data encryption breach by citing the Pegasus controversy wherein  Israeli spyware Pegasus had put a question mark on WhatsApp's data security and encryption mechanism. However, Senior Advocate Mr Kapil Sibal representing WhatsApp was quick to point out that WhatsApp has got the necessary approvals in place to run its UPI services in India. 

He also argued that the Pegasus incident has nothing has no connection with WhatsApp's Payment business which also involves Reserve Bank's regulatory oversight. Supreme Court has asked the respondents to file counter-affidavits within 4 weeks. considering the potential data security concerns over the handling of sensitive financial user data.