WhatsApp only shares limited data of payment service with its parent firm Facebook and the social media major does not use the information for commercial purpose, popular messaging app said today.
“Facebook does not use WhatsApp payment information for commercial purposes, it simply helps pass the necessary payment information to the bank partner and NPCI. In some cases, we may share limited data to help provide customer support to you or keep payments safe and secure,” WhatsApp said in an official communiqué released on its website.
Worth mentioning is, Facebook and its dalliance with data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica rocked the world recently. The so-called research firm was accused of improperly obtaining personal information on behalf of political clients. Going by Facebook’s own admission, data of about 87 million of its members was harvested by a quiz app and then passed on to the political consultancy.
It’s in this backdrop, the Ministry of Electronics and IT has written to National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) to verify data compliance around WhatsApp payment and see to it if the social media app is sharing its existing user’s data, with its parent firm Facebook, without their consent.
Facebook-owned messaging app that currently is running a beta version of its payment service in India, further added that when a user makes a payment, the mobile messaging app creates the necessary connection between the sender and recipient of the payment, using Facebook infrastructure.
