Latest News
Back
Document:
Whats App Pay - CCI dismisses Whatsapp pay antitrust case
The petition has been filed under Section 19(1)(a) of the Competition Act, 2002 alleging contravention of Section 4 of the Act against Whatsapp and Facebook. The petition has been filed by a lawyer Harshita Chawla, alleging that Facebook and Whatsapp are using their dominant position, which are currently providing instant messaging service.
Whatsapp is backed by Facebook and it is trying to bundle its messaging service app with Payment option namely Whatsapp Pay. The petitioner submits that it is using its dominance position to enter into UPI enabled Digital Payments app market. She argued that, Whatsapp pay will be available in Whatsapp itself, so whatsapp is trying to get advantage of its vast userbase to popularize its newly launched payment service. Thus, the petitioner prayed the antitrust watchdog to investigate into the matter and seeks direction to stop whatsapp to club the two features.
The Commission dismissed the plea and said that, WhatsApp Pay was available to “less than 1%" of WhatsApp users in India in its beta version, and that it is actually “yet to manifest in the market".
The Commission observed that Whatsapp is dominant in first relevant market i.e. market for OTT messaging apps through smartphones in India and it also observed that both the services are two different services i.e. in two different relevant markets. It also found out that Consumers are at their freewill to use Whatspp Pay, they can use UPI enabled payment services other than Whatsapp. Mere installing of Whatsapp doesn’t mean they are forced to use Whatsapp pay for payments.
The Commission observes that “Facebook and WhatsApp undeniably deal with customer sensitive data which is amenable to misuse and may raise potential antitrust concerns among other data protection issues. However, in the present case, the Informant has only alleged that WhatsApp/Facebook have access to data which they are using for doing targeted advertising. There is neither any concrete allegation, nor any specific information to support the competition concern of the Informant. In the absence thereof, there is nothing on record which the Commission can examine.”
Document:
