You are reading it here first: In an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court last night, WhatsApp has questioned the credentials and suitability of Good Governance Chambers (G2 Chambers), “a legal Think Tank”, that filed a PIL against WhatsApp Pay in the apex court on February 28, 2020. Filed by Brian Hennessy, the director and associate general counsel of WhatsApp, the affidavit argues that the PIL is not maintainable in court and calls G2 Chambers a “busybody” that, as an “unregistered Think Tank” [original emphasis], was just seeking “to create new barriers for WhatsApp Pay under the guise of enforcing fundamental rights”. The PIL, filed by Satwik Chinta, part of G2 Chambers, on February 28, 2020, had asked the Supreme Court to not grant permission to WhatsApp to expand its digital payments system in India through UPI. In its affidavit, WhatsApp has said that the beta version of WhatsApp Pay was launched on February 7, 2018 with NPCI’s approval and is limited to less than 1% of all its users in India. RBI and NPCI had green-lit the launch of WhatsApp Pay in early February 2020 and allowed it to expand its user base to 10 million users. In the last hearing on May 13, Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, on behalf of WhatsApp, had said that the company would not go ahead with its payments’ scheme without complying with all the regulations. At that time, the Supreme Court bench, constituting Chief Justice S.A. Bobde, and Justices Indu Malhotra and Hrishikesh…
