Paytm said that it does not share user data with any of its investors or with any foreign entity and stores data locally in India with no access to any external party. The company was responding to a reference made in the Rajya Sabha by Narendra Jadhav, who claimed that China’s Alibaba holding a stake in Paytm poses a “very serious threat to our national security“. In the Rajya Sabha earlier this week, Jadhav alleged that Alibaba, through Paytm, had applied for an NBFC license to possibly capture a major chunk of the domestic lending market by resorting to “predatory pricing and capital dumping“. According to Jadhav, Chinese multinationals, if allowed to dominate the Indian financial services sector, “will gain access to private and financial data of millions of individuals and corporates. This could inevitably expose India to a serious geopolitical risk and make our country vulnerable to external influence thereby compromising national security.” “Paytm goes a step beyond in ensuring utmost security of users’ data by processing and storing all the information in servers located within India. The company respects the user’s need for data privacy and security,” the company said a statement. In fact, the company has been pushing for mandated localisation of financial data for other players as well — a few days ago, Paytm asked the central government to push for storage of payment system data within the country and not allow mirroring of the data overseas. Chinese players in Indian financial space Alibaba is reportedly also investing in…
