Rajya Sabha MP files plea in Supreme court seeking data privacy on UPI platforms

Data protection is one the biggest concerns in today's digitize world where it can be used as a powerful asset for the better or worse. As our lives revolve around the digital platforms for almost every task, the personal data of users is at even greater risk of breaching and being compromised.

A similar concern was raised by Binoy Viswam, a Rajya Sabha MP, belonging to Communist Party of India (CPI), according to Viswam the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the National Payments Corporation of India (NCPI) are compromising interests of Indian users by allowing “non-compliant foreign entities” to operate its payment services in India in violation of right to privacy of millions of Indians who use online payment platforms. He stated these facts before the Supreme Court in a petition, claiming that this was putting sensitive financial data of Indians at huge risk.

“Although these entities are based in United States of America and take Indian data abroad, in the absence of any strong scrutiny and responsibility, the data shared on their platform is at very high risk of being misused,” the petition filed through advocate Sriram Parakkat said.

A strategic formulation of regulations is desired in to ensure that data collected on UPI platforms is not compromised or utilized by the companies in any other way other than for payment processing. A proper set of directions should be issued to Google India, Amazon Pay (India) and WhatsApp to ensure that data collected by them on UPI platform is not being shared with their parent company or any third party, Viswam expressed these concerns.
As witnessed in past 10 years there are many cases of data breaching in which the personal data of millions of users were compromised, providing their personal details to hackers or entities which exploited it to gain profit for themselves.

“Recently, for such allegations, CEOs of these foreign entities were directed to testify before the Judicial Committee of US Congress . During the hearing, US Congress members raised concerns about mishandling of data by the big tech firms,” the plea said.

Already a case relating to non-compliance with data localization norms by Whatsapp is filed in the Supreme Court. Another petition filed in February by legal think tank, Good Governance Chambers challenging expansion of Whatsapp into the digital payments systems in India through UPI is also pending before the top court.