Facebook data breach casts a doubtful shadow on WhatsApp Pay

Facebook on Tuesday gave Indian fintech experts 50 million reasons to doubt the safety of its ongoing experiment in India, WhatsApp Pay. The social media giant is caught in the middle of a data breach controversy. It allegedly shared data of up to 50 million users with a political data analytics company Cambridge Analytica. The data was allegedly used to tilt the results of US elections in favour of Donald Trump. 

India’s industry experts as well as fintech firms are voicing their reservations around such company getting access to financial data via WhatsApp. Many believe that these firms should be regulated as well as held accountable. The National Payments Corporation of India (NCPI) had given its consent for the roll-out of WhatsApp BHIM unified payments interface (UPI) beta with limited user base of one million users and low per transaction limit.

“Four banks will join the multi-bank BHIM UPI model in phases (in the coming weeks) and the full-feature product shall be released after the beta test is successful. The Multi-bank model offers advantages such as transaction load distribution between banks and helps integrate popular apps easily with BHIM UPI,” it said in a statement. 

Waging an all-out war against WhatsApp Pay, Paytm’s founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma had earlier alleged that Facebook is the “most evil company” in the world. His company on Tuesday again said the personal data shared by users on Facebook is being misused. “We should be extremely concerned and vigilant that such a company is getting access to India’s banking systems,” Paytm spokesperson said.