The Reserve Bank of India on Friday told the Delhi High Court that Google Pay is a third-party app provider, and does not operate any payments systems, which is why it is not enlisted as a payment system operator with the National Payments Corporation of India, reported PTI. Google Pay's operations do not violate the Payments & Settlements Act, 2007, the RBI said, in response to a petition that argued that Google Pay does not have required authorisation from the RBI. The petition was filed by one Abhijit Mishra, via advocate Payal Bahl. The RBI was represented by senior advocate V Giri, per the Economic Times. The bench consisting of Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Prateek Jalan has called for a detailed hearing on the matter, as it affects other third-party apps. The case will now be heard on July 22. MediaNama has not independently reviewed the court's order. WhatsApp says it is compliant with RBI localisation norms In a submission to the Supreme Court on June 17, WhatsApp said it is now compliant with the data localisation requirement in the RBI's April 2018 Circular and the follow-up FAQs released months later in June 2019. Filed by Brian Hennessey, associate general counsel at WhatsApp, the submission said that it has "expended significant engineering time and effort over the last 7 months", and localised all five payments data elements identified in the RBI's affidavit. "An independent third-party auditor, certified by CERT-In, has confirmed that WhatsApp's payments feature satisfies the data localisation…
