New Delhi: A parliamentary panel Thursday questioned Paytm representatives about the quantum of Chinese investment in the company. The Parliamentary panel told Paytm that the servers on which customer data is stored should be in India.
Top officials of Paytm appeared before the Joint Committee of Parliament on the Personal Data Protection Bill. They submitted their suggestions on key aspects of the proposed legislation such as management and transfer abroad of sensitive personal data, sources said.
Members of the panel from different political parties asked Paytm why the server on which data of its customers is collected and stored is abroad when it claims to be an Indian firm, sources said. The panel members told Paytm representatives that the server on which customer data is stored should be based in India. The members of the panel also wanted to know about the quantum of Chinese investments in the digital payment service and specifics about its ‘backend linkages’.
Questions were also raised about the possible conflict of interest considering Paytm also sells its own products on its e-commerce platform.
In its submission before the panel, Paytm said sensitive and personal data may be transferred outside India for the purpose of processing when explicit consent is given by the ‘data principal’ for such transfer.
Facebook, Twitter and Amazon have deposed before the panel, while representatives of telecom operators Reliance Jio and Airtel and cab aggregators Ola and Uber have been asked to appear before it.
The committee, chaired by BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi, is examining the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019.
