Paytm has complained about Google Pay to National Payments Corporation of India, alleging that the payment platform is violating guidelines by sharing data with its group companies and third parties, and for advertisement purposes.
“We would like to highlight a very important fact that Google Pay, which is an un-regulated payments platform, has the scope of using their customers’ data for their monetary gains with complete disregard of the user’s need for privacy,” read Paytm’s letter, according to Business Standard. “The critical payments data collected by them is being processed and stored outside of India, which can have severe security implications in case of a data breach as their policy states that this data is also being disclosed with advertisers and third-parties.”
The Reserve Bank of India has given all payment system operators in India until October 15 to ensure that transaction data is stored within the country. Google has agreed to store data from its digital payment service locally but has sought more time from the Indian government.
“India is in the process of drafting its personal data protection bill,” said Paytm. “Against this backdrop, it is of utmost concern that global companies are sharing Indian users’ personal data among group companies.”
Google refuted the charges. “Google does not use any individual UPI transactions data for any monetisation purpose e.g. for advertisements,” a company spokesperson told Moneycontrol in an email.
The firm, however, said that Google Pay shares user data for processing transactions or providing Google Pay services with its authorised partners. “These include participating banks, banks on UPI infrastructure, bill aggregators, merchants on the Google Pay for business programme and with whom the users are transacting and billers such as utility services,” it said. “Sharing of this information is in accordance with the applicable laws and requisite consent obtained from the user and in conformity with standard industry practice.”
Google launched its payment application Google Tez in September 2017, and now calls it Google Pay.
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