Paytm says it never shares user data with investors, external party

Digital payment and e-commerce company Paytm today said it does not share user data with any of its investors or with any foreign entity and stores data locally in India with no access to any external party.

One97 Communications Ltd, which owns the brand Paytm, India's largest digital payments company, never shares any of its user's data with any third party agencies, stakeholders, investors or any foreign entity, it said.

The statement came a day after Member of Parliament Narendra Jadhav said in Rajya Sabha that China's Alibaba holding a stake in Paytm poses a "very serious threat to our national security".

"Paytm is an Indian owned, controlled and domiciled company. We do not share user data with our investors or any foreign entity," the company spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Jadhav had in a zero hour mention in the Rajya Sabha yesterday alleged that Alibaba had applied for a Non-Banking Finance Company (NBFC) licence in India through Paytm, to "possibly capture a large chunk of our domestic lending market by resorting to predatory pricing and capital dumping".

"If Chinese multinationals are allowed to dominate the Indian financial services sector, they will gain access to private and financial data of millions of individuals and corporates. This could inevitably expose India to a serious geopolitical risk and make our country vulnerable to external influence thereby compromising national security," he had said.

Paytm vehemently denied sharing users data with any entity saying it ensures the utmost security of users data by processing and storing all the information in servers located within India.

"Our data is processed and stored locally in India with no access provided to any external party. We are the biggest champions of data sovereignty with complete ownership in India and only by Indian consumers," it said adding the firm respects the user's need for data privacy and security.

Paytm is India's largest digital financial services provider with 300 million registered users.

One97 Communications, which operates Paytm, is backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Jack Ma's Ant Financial.

Zero Hour is the time when Members of Parliament can raise issues of urgent public importance in both houses of Parliament.