Google Pay: Delhi HC seeks Centre, RBI response on plea alleging guideline violation

New Delhi: The Delhi High court on Monday sought response from Centre, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and others on a plea for directions to Google Pay to ensure immediate compliance of data localisation norms, data storage and data sharing norms.

The plea also seeks direction to Google India Digital Services Private Limited to give an undertaking to not store data on its App under UPI ecosystem and further not to share the same with any third party (be it a holding or parent company).

The next date of hearing is on 24 September.

The plea filed by advocate Abhishek Sharma alleges that the company is storing personal sensitive user data in contravention of UPI Procedural Guidelines version 1.7 dated October 2019 which allows such personal sensitive data to be stored only by PSP bank systems and not by any Third Party Application.

“However, ‘Google Pay’ being a Third Party Application, despite strong mandate against storing Personal Sensitive data, is storing the same in utter disregard to the binding UPI Procedural Guidelines.” It added.

The plea also alleges Google India Digital Services Private Limited has failed to Localize Data timely and effectively in complete breach of binding regulations. It states that as per circular dated 6 April 2018, Reserve Bank of India directed all system providers to store the entire data relating to payments system operated by them in a system only in India and to comply with the same within a span of six months. However, the petitioner alleges that despite the explicit directions of RBI, the company has failed to comply with the same.

It further alleges that the company is also in breach of Mandatory feature of Interoperability and intent call by forcing its users to use Google pay as a sole option of payment specially in P2M (Peer to Merchant Transactions) which is against the governing rules and regulations

The petitioner states that he is aggrieved by this unchecked and unregulated exponential expansion of operations of Google Pay despite serious violation of rules and regulations.