Last Updated on 22/11/2021 by Sanskriti
On Wednesday, in response to a PIL alleging that Google Pay accessed, used, and stored Aadhaar and financial information without permission, the Delhi high court has requested responses from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The petition was served with a notice by a bench consisting of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh, who also sought the opinion of Google India Digital Companies Pvt. Ltd.
The bench has set the date of November 8 for a hearing on a petition filed by Abhijit Mishra, a financial economist, who claimed that Google Pay’s “Terms and Conditions” “explicitly states that the company will probably be storing the cost instruction particulars of the events including Financial institution Accounts and Aadhaar particulars,” despite the fact that there is no pervasive evidence of this. In the plea filed by the lawyer, Payal Bahl mentions that “The unauthorized/unlicensed/unregistered entity Respondent No. 3 i.e. Google Pay is gathering the Aadhaar and banking transaction particulars of the residents of India which is a sheer violation of the above-mentioned act together with Article 21 of the Structure of India.”
As a private company, Google Pay will not be able to collect, use, or store citizens’ Aadhaar and banking information, according to the statement.
In a separate PIL, the petitioner alleged that Google’s mobile payment service, Google Pay (or GPay for short), was enabling monetary transactions without the required RBI approval.
It claimed that Google Pay was acting as a funds system provider in contravention of the Funds and Settlements Act since it had no valid authorization from the country’s central financial institution to provide such services.
Udaan became the fastest Indian business to achieve unicorn status in September 2018, accomplishing it in just 26 months. However, given the record-breaking sums raised by Indian entrepreneurs this year, that record was always in jeopardy. In answer to that assertion, Google India Digital Companies informed the courtroom in the last 12 months that Google Pay did not want RBI approval since it isn’t a payment system operator (PSO) but a third-party software provider.
Google Pay is a third-party app provider (TPAP) that does not provide any payment services, according to the RBI. Because of this, its operations do not violate the Cost and Settlement System Act of 2007, as stated by RBI.
