Soon after PhonePe and Paytm allegations, Google Pay modifies privacy policy

As RBI's data localisation deadline is going to be ended soon, digital payments platforms in India seem to be at loggerheads with offshore players. Soon after Paytm's allegations on Google Pay over sharing data with third parties for monetary gains, the latter has updated its privacy policy.

The earlier version of Google Pay's privacy policy which outlined that it could "collect, store, use and/or disclose" personal data and "any communications made through Google Pay", has been tweaked and eventually it removed the word "disclose" from its complex policy structure.

According to a Reuters report, Google clarified that the updates were made to make it easier to understand, however, it declined to comment whether it was done due to Paytm's letter to NPCI.

Further, Google Pay's privacy policy stated that it does not use any individual UPI transactions data for any monetisation purpose e.g. for advertisements albeit it could be used for monetisation purposes only by the platform itself.

Google Pay also clarified that so far it hasn't used users' data for monetisation.

Google Pay (earlier Google Tez), which completed its one year of operations in the country, has gained decent popularity amongst the audience for its payments interface running on government-owned UPI platform.

However, the Alphabet-owned company has been facing the wrath of local players such as Paytm and PhonePe over its privacy policy and data centres.

While Google is the only foreign player running on UPI platform, other global players such as WhatsApp, Amazon, and Paypal have been waiting for a long to enter the UPI bandwagon.