WhatsApp Shares Your Payments Data With Facebook – Report
As per the latest report on data storage, WhatsApp may have been sharing user data with third-party services.
Recently, Facebook-owned WhatsApp launched its payments feature in the country in collaboration with UPI. After a beta run, the WhatsApp payments feature still awaits a full roll out. But in the latest report, it has been revealed that WhatsApp may have shared the payments data of users with its parent Facebook.
After the data scandal, Facebook has been under the radar on how it stores and uses customer data. The social media company has been accused of storing user data to use it for illicit purposes.
If WhatsApp has been sharing its payments data with Facebook, what is Facebook doing with it?
The WhatsApp payments feature is based on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform, and the option is still on a trial. The social messaging company rolled out the feature to some of the users in February.
The feature still awaits a final green signal from NPCI and is expected to roll out to all its users very soon.
WhatsApp Shares Your Payments Data With Third-party Services & Facebook
As per the latest report on data storage, WhatsApp may have been sharing user data with third-party services. User information included data such as mobile phone number, registration, VPA (Virtual Payments Address), sender’s UPI PIN and payment amount. All the details have been specified in a clause in WhatsApp’s privacy policy.
The data shared with third-party services has been largely explained as to improve the payments services and to keep them safe and secure. As per the WhatsApp Payments Privacy Policy, it shares user data with third-party service providers which also includes Facebook.
In the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook recently came out with a report that data of over half a million users from India were compromised.
How Will Facebook Use WhatsApp’s Payments Data?
Facebook is known to use customer data for its marketing purposes. If WhatsApp is sharing Payments data with parent Facebook, the social media company will use the data to target its users on Facebook to advertise products and services accordingly. WhatsApp shares data such as transaction history, amount spend, frequency, from where it is spent and more.
Facebook will use the data to form a spending pattern of the customer to segment its users according to their spending habits and push ads.
Paytm, MobiKwik, PhonePe Have Similar Policies
If you think that only WhatsApp does this, and the other digital payment platforms do not store or share your data, then you are partially wrong. Every platform has its own privacy policy, and it clearly states that all these platforms store and share data with third-party services to improve services and facilities.
Paytm, MobiKwik, Flipkart-owned PhonePe and Google-owned Tez are the WhatsApp Payments alternatives available in the market. All have their privacy policies which state they may share customer data to improve services.
Currently, the WhatsApp payments feature is being operated by four national banks in India with UPI on board.
As per a circular by the National Payments Council of India (NPCI), which controls UPI platform, the banks associated with any third-party payment apps like WhatsApp or PhonePe, it needs an exclusive permission from NPCI before they can share any user data.
