Competition Commission of India Dismisses Antitrust Case Against WhatsApp
Aug. 19, 2020The Competition Commission of India (CCI) hasdismissed an antitrust case against Facebook-owned WhatsApp. The order was made public on Tuesday (August 18). Earlier in May,Reutershad reported that theCCI was investigating WhatsAppfor potential antitrust violations.
The plaintiff had claimed that WhatsApp attempted to abuse its dominance as a messaging platform to foray intoUPI payments. However, the CCI is not convinced enough to take any legal action against WhatsApp.
“As stated by WhatsApp, the number of users being served under the beta version is limited to less than 1% of its users in India. To that extent, the Commission tends to agree with WhatsApp that this allegation is premature,”reads the order.
The latest development comes at a time when WhatsApp is facing troubles to scale up its WhatsApp Pay operations. While theNational Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) approved the servicein February since the messaging giant reportedly agreed to comply with the data localization regulations, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)informed the Supreme Courtit has not permitted WhatsApp Pay to go live for full-scale operations earlier this month.
In fact, India is not the only country where WhatsApp Pay is facing hurdles for expanding its operations. WhatsApp had tosuspend WhatsApp Pay in Brazilmerely a week after it got launched in the country.
Subin writes about consumer tech, software, and security. He secretly misses the headphone jack while pretending he’s better off with the wireless freedom.
