Alibaba backed digital payments company Paytm has trained its guns on Google Pay, asking the NPCI, a bank-owned entity which operates the UPI payments system in India, to "revisit the Payment Policy of Google Pay for India". Both an NPCI representative and a Paytm representative have verified the authenticity of the letter, which was sent via email at around 4pm yesterday by Sonia Dhawan, VP at Paytm, to NPCI CEO Dilip Asbe, with a copy to Ajay Sawhney, Secretary MEITY. Paytm has targeted WhatsApp before, and some of its allegations were legitimate then, WhatsApp's launch is being stalled owing to a push for data localisation (from Paytm), and concerns around data sharing, which Paytm has also raised in this letter. The text of Paytm's letter is transcribed below, and we've added for your reference, a copy of Google's Terms which Paytm has criticised. On Paytm's Allegations In the letter, Paytm makes the following specific allegations (our comments in-line): 1. That Google Pay is unregulated, saying that "Google Pay is an unregulated payments platform" MediaNama's take: This allegation is factually incorrect. Google Pay might be unlicensed, but it is not unregulated. Google Pay, as well as all digital businesses operating in India are governed by Indian laws, including the IT Act, which covers all technology companies. While it is true that UPI apps like Google Pay are unlicensed, UPI itself has a stringent regulatory mechanism, as per which not everyone can launch a UPI app: there is a whole set of…
