The Supreme Court on Thursday adjourned the plea filed by CPI MP Binoy Viswam seeking a direction to the Reserve Bank of India to frame necessary regulations to make sure that data of Indian citizens collected on UPI platforms is not exploited by companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook. The matter is to be heard on February 1.
The three-judge bench of Chief Justice S.A. Bobde, Justices A.S. Bopanna and V. Ramasubramanian heard the plea and issued notice on an impleadment application.
In his petition, Viswam also prayed that Indians’ right to privacy should be protected from being misused by giant corporations for their financial ends. The petitioner has submitted that millions of Indians use UPI platforms for making payments and with the RBI and NPCIL allowing the big four tech giants to participate in this UPI ecosystem without much scrutiny, sensitive financial data of Indian citizens are at risk of being misused.
The petitioner has further sought for directions to restrict Google Pay, Amazon Pay, and WhatsApp Pay from sharing information with their parent companies or any third party under any circumstance.
It has also urged the Court to restrict WhatsApp from launching its full-scale payment service, WhatsApp Pay, in India till all requirements and norms are complied with.
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