Facebook faces delays in WhatsApp payments in India



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The Indian Government is delaying Facebook Inc.'s plans for the launch of its nationwide WhatsApp payment service due to concerns about how user data will be stored and other issues. , according to people close to the file. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technologies, or MEITY, has asked WhatsApp and its partner banks to provide more details about the payment system, officials said. The ministry also asked that the payments controller of the industry, the National Payments Corporation of India, confirms that WhatsApp is fully compliant with its requirements, they said. "We are working closely with the Indian government, NPCI and several banks including our" Anne Yeh, a spokeswoman for WhatsApp, said in response to questions sent by email, refusing to elaborate on the timing of the program. a nationwide launch. "Dilip Asbe, the CEO of NPCI, declined to comment

The delay comes right after WhatsApp has been involved in a controversy over lynchings in the country.The images doctored and fake videos on the child abduction messaging platform have become viral in rural areas, whipping the mobs who beat and lynched MEITY warned Thursday in a statement that the company was facing legal action for encouraging violence if she did not act.

It is unclear what role, if any, plays in the WhatsApp approval process. of conformity, the banq India's central government has recently required payment services to store customer data on local servers to maintain privacy and security. The delay of expansion could cost the company Facebook a growing competition from the local leader Paytm and its global rivals such as Google's Tez Inc. and Truecaller of Sweden

"The rivals have a pioneering advantage and a another hold-up could mean that WhatsApp "explains Arnav Gupta, Digital Strategy Analyst at New Delhi at Forrester Research Inc." The faster they are, the faster they can improve based on user and business feedback "

Read more: WhatsApp is supposed to speed up payments in the biggest market

The WhatsApp messaging service, where the groups share gossip and viral videos, has been a powerful growth engine for the giant of the technology. India has become the largest WhatsApp global market with 230 million users and the payments industry has attracted nearly one million people since the launch of the limited beta test in February.

WhatsApp was to expand the service nationwide by June. Bloomberg News reported in May

WhatsApp's push for digital payments poses a threat to rivals because of its large number of users confined to a Facebook ecosystem. His service was compared to China WeChat, which also gathered hundreds of millions of users before plunging into payments, eventually becoming a major player in mobile finance. Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder of Paytm, accused Facebook of evading security requirements during his pilot project to create a "walled garden" – a vast, lucrative database over which he has total control.

WhatsApp The company has published full-page advertisements in prominent English and Hindi newspapers warning readers about fake news. WhatsApp said Thursday that it was going to test the brakes on users' ability to transmit photos and videos.

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