Indian Government should not allow Whatspp to start payment feature

In recent Q2, 2018 post meeting conference, Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook is waiting for a green signal from the government of India to roll out peer-to-peer payments feature for over 200 million users on the instant mobile messaging platform. 

Its my sincere appeal to Government of India for not providing any such permissions to Facebook/Whatsapp. There are various issues clubbed together in this appeal.

The first and foremost objection for such opposition is the way Facebook as principal and whatsapp as its subsidiary is dealing with Government of India.In matters of finding out various solutions for curbing fake news issues,this company has came out openly rejecting Government's request stating its against privacy laws in USA. If this company's main alignment is towards following the laws of USA then what is the guarantee that in matters of financial transactions this company will obey and follow laws laid down by Reserve Bank of India or any other institution in India? Are these companies submitting themselves to Indian Jurisdiction? How many Facebook and Whatsapp users presently know about their submission to which country's laws.The way Marc Zuckerberg is responding in US Senate as well as in EU it makes this fact clear that BREAK THE RULES is motto of this company and which has only one motto of ruling the world through social media then and through economic ruling now.

We must understand the ill-intentions behind this payment feature.A company having its monopoly over most of the population of world through social media and which can influence the mindsets to topple the various regimes and change the entire mindset of the population, if got opportunity to handle the finances of the population it will give huge amount of weaponry in its hands which no government in world would be able to fight.

A company having its budget equivalent with almost  70% countries in the world if get opportunity to enter financial sector in India will further become more stronger and practically will influence choices/thinking/liking habits of 85% of the worlds population.

We have been proudly saying that we are fastest growing economy in world and I certainly foresee a threat to this fastest growing economy by this company called Facebook.

There would be certainly questions to this logic ,as I am no authority on Economic affairs but my limited study taught me that "POWER CORRUPTS AND ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY".

A company with its dominant position in social media if got the booster of financial transactions from country like India,it would be disaster for democracies in the world and those democracies could be mere puppets dancing on tunes of Facebook.

Its very positive and appropriate move by Government of India to deny the permission. Zuckerberg's stock lost almost $17 billion within an hour after the company reported slow users' growth in Q2 2018, said "we've broadened our focus to building this [Payments feature] for other countries so we can give more people this ability faster". 

So the ambition is very clear to rule the world through social media as well as Payment feature and Government of India should think in directions of not encouraging monopoly of this Foreign company in Payment sector.

Another objection to this company is in regards with Data security and Privacy.Time and again issues of Data Breach have been surfaced about Facebook and they have accepted.acknowledged the same and remained non-committal about the protection of Data. This company is facing huge legal battles for Data Breaches and may be required to pay huge compensations. So when financial feature was not integral part of this company,so many data breaches occurred,How this company can be trusted when it will be operating solely on Financial Data?

A company,whose sole foundation in based on Data sale,whats guarantee that it will not sale the Financial Data and revert back to its apology strategy?

Advocate Mahendra Limaye

Cyber Legal consultant