Launch of new services like payments over whatsapp may have resulted in regulatory arbitrage, but it will eventually converge with the rest of the industry, a senior HDFC Bank official said today.
“There will be some arbitrage which is there from a regulatory or some of those (perspective), which I think will converge over a period of time,” its deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar said speaking at a conference organised by Outlook Money here.
The comments come amid an extremely heated debate wherein the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has been accused of creating exceptions in order to aid Whatsapp launch payments service.
Home-grown mobile wallet company Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma has termed Facebook, which owns Whatsapp, an “evil” company following this.
Whatsapp is the most popular instant messaging app in the country with over 220 million subscribers. There are other players like Google Tez and Truecaller which are also offering UPI-based payment services.
Without elaborating on what is the arbitrage, Sukthankar said it is difficult for it to continue in an inter-connected financial services system like ours.
“You can’t allow in today’s highly connected payment system, a weak link, which exposes the rest of the system to risks,” he said, adding that critical issues including dispute resolution mechanism need to be addressed. PTI