Google Pay denies sharing Indian users’ data with 3rd parties

Google on Friday denied the claims made in certain media reports that its Google Pay app is sharing Indian customers' transaction data with third parties.

Citing an affidavit filed before a bench of Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan in Delhi High Court, a section of the media said that Google has told the court that it is allowed to share customers transaction data with third parties with the prior permission of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and payment service providing (PSP) banks.

The affidavit was filed in response to a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking action against Google Pay for allegedly violating the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines related to data storage and sharing.

"This is to clarify that press reports on the basis of the affidavit filed by Google before the Delhi High Court, do not represent the complete facts," a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

"We would like to put it on record that Google Pay is in full compliance with Unified Payment Interface (UPI) procedural guidelines, issued by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and the applicable laws and does not share customer transaction data with any third party outside the payments flow," the company spokesperson added.

The high court has listed the matter for hearing on November 10.

Earlier this week, Google Pay in collaboration with Visa and banking partners rolled out tokenisation across its platform, enabling users to safely transact with their cards and use Tap-to-pay feature on near-field communication (NFC)-enabled point of sale (POS) terminals and online merchants.

The feature is now available to users of Axis and SBI Card, with Kotak and more banks expected to follow suit very soon.

With tokenisation, Google Pay Android users can use their debit or credit card to make payments through a secure digital token attached to their phone without having to physically share their credit or debit card details.