Neeraj Arora quits Paytm's board after VSS' accusations on WhatsApp UPI

Soon after accusations of regulatory manipulation from Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma over WhatsApp UPI, the instant messaging app's Vice President Neeraj Arora has resigned from Paytm’s board.

According to an ET Now tweet, Arora has left the One97 Communication-owned company after the controversy.

#BREAKING | WhatsApp's Neeraj Arora resigns from Paytm board.

Alert: Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma had criticised WhatsApp UPI payments model on Twitter.@WhatsApp @Paytm @vijayshekhar https://t.co/dQ6CBYhr1I pic.twitter.com/NrC2McknOF

— ET NOW (@ETNOWlive) February 14, 2018

Arora had been a member of Paytm’s board of directors since June 2015. Vice President and Global Head of Business at WhatsApp, Arora joined the freeware platform in 2011. He also led the acquisitions and strategic investments for Google before joining WhatsApp board.

Entrackr is awaiting confirmation and response on the development from Arora. Once we get his response we will update the report.

On Wednesday, Sharma via twitter hit out at WhatsApp’s parent Facebook, saying it was killing the open platform of the UPI with its “custom close garden implementation”. He also blamed Mark Zuckerberg-led company for trying cheap tactics to promote its payments product.

After failing to win war against India’s open internet with cheap tricks of free basics, Facebook is again in play.
Killing beautiful open UPI system with its custom close garden implementation.
I am surprised, champions of open @India_Stack , let it happen ! https://t.co/wIsNuF1AiB

— Vijay Shekhar (@vijayshekhar) February 14, 2018

After the soft launch, WhatsApp restricting the transfer of money largely among WhatsApp users and not enabling the movement of funds to other UPI IDs. Besides, it's not letting users scan and pay, and does not allow collect requests (when someone sends you a request to pay) as well.

Moreover, domestic payment firms accuse tech giants like Google and WhatsApp for being given special concessions and flexibility to get them onto the UPI platform, while the homegrown firms were strictly asked to follow each of the guidelines.

Sharma tweet also draws attention from other industry leaders, who in reply trolled him for criticising the WhatsApp UPI.

Meanwhile, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has asked messaging app WhatsApp to restrict its peer-to-peer payments service to only 1 per cent of its more than 200 million users here in India and adhere to all the procedural guidelines of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

This is the third senior-level exit in the Paytm in a span of 30 days.

Earlier in January, Dushyant Saraswat who headed the gaming division had also resigned from the company. In the same month, Paytm senior vice president and Paytm Gold head Krishna Hegde resigned from the Alibaba-backed payment major.