Did The Indian Company Paytm Compromise Private Data?

The digital payment company Paytm was boiling recently after allegations were made that the company has shared user data with their foreign investors. This issue was raised in the Indian parliament, citing a threat to national security. Paytm, on the other hand, has denied sharing data with any third-party vendor.

In an email statement, parent company One97 reiterated they never shared any user data with third parties either inside our outside the country. The company Paytm is Indian owned and controlled and the company spokesperson has ensured they don’t leak data and are serious with the data proprietary.

The Indian lawmaker in the parliament has stated how Alibaba applied for a non-banking finance company license in India via Paytm to “possibly capture a large chunk of the domestic lending market by resorting to predatory pricing and capital dumping.” He went on to say, “if Chinese multinationals are allowed to dominate the Indian financial services sector, they will gain access to private and financial data of millions of individuals and corporates. This could inevitably expose India to a serious geopolitical risk and make our country vulnerable to external influence, thereby compromising national security.”

Paytm has strongly refuted the charges and ensured Indian agencies that the security of users is safe because it is all stored locally in India. “Our data are processed and stored locally in India with no access provided to any external party. We are the biggest champions of data sovereignty with complete ownership in India and only by Indian consumers,” it said.

The controversy comes at a time when business for Paytm is booming. The company reportedly breached $4 billion in monthly gross transaction value. According to a report in Livemint, the number of transactions also hit 1.3 billion in the June ending quarter.

Paytm said in a statement said, “Paytm has been witnessing a tremendous increase in the adoption of digital payments in tier 2 and tier 3 cities, which constitutes 50 percent of its total user base. This has helped the company to achieve an annual run rate of five billion transactions and $50 billion in GTV,”