The Delhi High Court on Thursday issued notice to Centre and Reserve Bank of India on a plea to suspend the operations of Google India Digital Services in UPI through its App “Google Pay” till it completely complies with interoperability rules.
Justice Asha Menon has issued notice to Google India and directed respondents to file their reply within three weeks.
The plea sought directions to bar Google India from expanding its user base till a thorough audit of the Google Pay app is conducted by an independent third party. The petitioner also sought penalty and punitive actions against Google.
“… the petitioner in order to contribute by way of donation in PM Cares fund in view of the covid-19 pandemic, decided to use ‘Google Pay’ … However, the application did not allow the petitioner to proceed with the transaction without adding account details …coerces user to make another VPA/ UPI ID of Google Pay in order to make transaction …,” the petition reads.
This is restricting users from making payments by introducing the entry barrier of adding bank account just to increase the market share and it is taking undue advantage of the covid-19 situation to increase its user data base, the plea alleged.
In January 2017, during UPI registrations, NPCI had said no merchant should force the customer to create a VPA or register for UPI to avail any services on a merchant app,” the NPCI circular had said.
Read the order here;
64051_2020-India Legal Bureau