WhatsApp says it will store payments data locally; is in compliance with RBI

NEW DELHI: WhatsApp, which has been running a pilot of its payment service in the country with 1 million users has said that it has built a system that stores payments-related data locally in India. The company is therefore, in complaince with the Reserve Bank of India's mandate to all payment firms which are supposed to store data locally from October 15 of this year.

In a statement, a WhatsApp spokesperson said, “In India, almost 1 million people are testing WhatsApp payments to send money to each other in a simple and secure way. In response to India's payments data circular, we've built a system that stores payments-related data locally in India." It added that WhatsApp payments is useful for people in their daily lives and we hope to expand the feature to all of India soon so we can contribute to the country's financial inclusion goals.”

The approval for a full-fledged roll out of the instant messaging giant's payment service is stuck for several months due to regulatory approvals from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and the RBI.


WhatsApp's statement comes at a time when several payment firms have been requesting for the deadline of the RBI mandate to be extended along with requesting the regulator to allow for one copy of the data to be stored in India instead of mandating full data localisation.

ET has reported last week that payment companies including Visa, MasterCard, Google, Facebook and PayPal among others had met finance minister Arun Jaitley to seek temporary relief from the RBI mandate.