Communist Party of India MP Binoy Viswam on Thursday petitioned the Supreme Court, seeking the Reserve Bank of India to frame necessary regulations to make sure that Indians’ data collected on UPI platforms is not exploited by companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook. Viswam also prayed that Indians’ right to privacy should be protected from being misused by “giant corporations” for their “financial ends”, according to a press statement. Bar and Bench first reported this. “The Data Protection Act is not yet passed and it is in the form of a Bill. In the interregnum period, the rights of privacy of the Indian Citizens, especially the financial data, have to be protected by the Hon’ble Supreme Court,” the statement added. The petition, filed through Supreme Court advocate Sriram Parakkat, also sought that the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which owns and operates the UPI platform, make sure that data collected by UPI apps operated by these companies not be shared with their parent company or any other third party under any circumstances. Amazon Pay, Google Pay, and WhatsApp Pay, are all based on the UPI architecture. According to a press release shared by Parakkat with MediaNama, the petition claimed that RBI and NPCI have “permitted the three members of ‘Big Four Tech Giants’ i.e. Amazon, Google and Facebook/WhatsApp (Beta phase) to participate in the UPI ecosystem without much scrutiny and inspite of blatant violations of UPI Guidelines and RBI Regulations”. "This conduct of the RBI and the NPCI puts…
