Don’t know about your messages, but your WhatsApp Pay details are safe, as per the pay policy

A review of WhatsApp’s new privacy policy shows that WhatsApp Pay policy will get precedence over any changes in the messaging app policy.

Though WhatsApp has over 400 million active users, it has been a late entrant in payments and micro-insurance.afp (MINT_PRINT)

A review of WhatsApp's India payments policy reveals that Facebook is not going to have any access to a user's details of a digital transaction as the Indian policy overrules any privacy changes in the messaging platform.

WhatsApp Pay's India payment policy is different from the privacy policy on WhatsApp that has just been updated and has gotten almost everybody worried about their privacy as far as the messaging app is concerned.

WhatsApp has announced a new privacy policy and if you plan to use WhatsApp after February 8, you will have to accept and agree with it. Thus far, WhatsApp users could choose not to share any information with Facebook but the new privacy policy removes that option.

However, there seems to be some relief as far as WhatsApp Pay is concerned.

“If there is any conflict between the India payments privacy policy and the WhatsApp privacy policy, the India payments privacy policy will control solely with respect to your use of payments, and only to the extent of the conflict,” the WhatsApp's India payments policy states.

According to sources, regulators had “ensured” that this was done before WhatsApp Pay got the go-ahead for the India launch in November 2020. A person aware of the matter said that this was one of the primary concerns before WhatsApp got the approval for WhatsApp Pay. WhatsApp Pay was in beta for two and a half years before being approved.

According to WhatsApp these changes in messaging policy were prompted by the increased usage of WhatsApp by small and large businesses to reach its customers. For businesses WhatsApp brought in the shopping button, shopping cart etc and the idea behind this is to bring in the full commerce stack to WhatsApp. WhatsApp also said recently that it is working on enabling micro-insurance and pension products sale on the platform in partnership with financial services.

WhatsApp's new privacy policy got a lot of users very worried and to allay those fears, WhatsApp has stated that the messages between users will continue to be encrypted. However, if a user interacts with a business or a store on WhatsApp, that is going to be visible to multiple people.

“When you message with a business on WhatsApp, keep in mind that the content you share may be visible to several people in that business. In addition, some businesses might be working with third-party service providers (which may include Facebook) to help manage their communications with their customers,” WhatsApp has said in a blog post.