Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

WhatsApp To Foray Into Digital Payments With India's Controversial Aadhaar (mashable.com)

Posted by msmash on from the how-about-that dept.

Facebook-owned instant messaging app WhatsApp is mulling a foray into digital payment services in India (Editor's note: the link is paywalled; alternate source), its first such offering globally, and has advertised to hire a digital transactions lead in the country. From a report on The Ken: WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned messaging app, is working quietly to launch person-to-person payments on its platform within the next six months, said four sources with knowledge of the matter. The initiative is seen as strategic for Facebook and currently being driven out of the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Its career page lists, among other roles, an opening for a digital transaction lead with knowledge of UPI, Aadhaar and BHIM, to be based out of Menlo Park. Aadhaar is a controversial database that has biometric information of more than 1.2 billion people in India. WhatsApp, used by over a billion people, has more than 200 million active users in India.

16 comments

  1. Re: What you need to know about India by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    everything i learned from you i learned about the world now i feel cultured.

  2. I for one, ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Aadhaar is a gigantic heap of biometric material and sensitive personal information, that was supposed to curb corruption. Of course, any such mechanism will be used for corruption itself, too, and so the biometrics merely make it yet harder for individual citizens to recover from successful impersonation attacks. This then in one fell swoop makes daily life a lot more complex despite being touted as a simplification measure to a still barely (functionally) illiterate population.

    What could possibly go wrong? Well, facebook, those *cough* proven guardians of privacy *cough* could join in the fray.

    So I for one am merely thankful that I don't live in India. Interesting times, indeed.

    1. Re: I for one, ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What sort of biometric info are we talking about?

  3. aadhaar is controversial because ... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 0
    Adhaar (and its cognates in other indic languages) mean proof. It is the first basic nationwide identity system being implemented in India. Till now there is no real proof of Identity in India. Anyone can call himself Eustace H. Plimsoll, of The Laburnums, Alleyn Road, West Dulwich and the judge has no way to check if the chap had been up before him or not.

    People who used multiple identities for personal and tax reasons are opposed to aadhaar system, as are opposition parties. Especially the Congress party, which benefits a lot by the illegal immigration of Bangaladeshis and Pakistanis into India. Prime Minister Modi is compared to Trump or vice versa because both of them are accused of using illegal immigration as a bogeyman to get votes from the majority nationalistic segments of their respective countries.

    Not that aadhaar is perfect, but it is better than status quo. The "bio-metric information" is touted a lot because this will raise the heckles in the west and get more clicks.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:aadhaar is controversial because ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People who used multiple identities for personal and tax reasons are opposed to aadhaar system, as are opposition parties.

      "Only our enemies and people up to no good anyway oppose this."

      Not that aadhaar is perfect, but it is better than status quo.

      Proof please. What biometrics used as password (and thus regarded as a lot better than the best it can do, namely act as a shitty, noisy, username) do in the long run, is make the citizen expendable. We have seen this already, so proof of that is available. Now, I know you have plenty enough citizens, but building a shiny! new! full of blinkenlights! system with ruthless callousness designed right into it, and so a result of the system working well, is not automatically better than the status quo of a system where the drawbacks stem from the system not working well. But hey, if you know better then you can make your case with actual arguments too, no?

      The "bio-metric information" is touted a lot because this will raise the heckles in the west and get more clicks.

      "Biometrics are fine, it's just the namby-pamby activist furriners that say nay, but we like to rile them so it's all good."

      Strong arguments there, guv. Honestly, I'd love to be proven wrong in my world-weary cynical views. But you're not succeeding so far. Care to try again?

    2. Re:aadhaar is controversial because ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Problem is that India currently has too many such schemes. Aside from the Aadhar card, they have PAN cards as well, which one has to have in order to be eligible for employment. Unlike in the US, if one loses one of these, a new card number is issued, along with the card. In the US, if you lose your social security card, you can get a new one, but would have the same ss#. So in India, they have an Aadhar card, a PAN card, a voter ID card, and in some cases, a ration card. I'm not even counting passports and driving licenses.

      On the other hand, ever since they got rid of their larger denominations, India has moved more into cashless transactions using mobile phones. Maybe integrate all those schemes into one based on this, and use it for transactions

      On the Modi-Trump comparison, Modi has more in common with Ted Cruz, if one shaves his beard. Both are pious, and both are very conservative. Only major thing Modi has in common with Trump is Twitter. He issues tons of tweets every day: in comparison to him Trump hardly tweets at all

      I know that India has a serious problem on its Bangladesh border. On the Pakistani border, things are a lot tighter, since no Indian party supports open borders with them. But in Bengal and Assam, parties have a lot to gain since not only do illegal immigrants easily blend in and vote, but also, both states have high Muslim populations that support it. Also, in Bengal, there is a huge nationalist sentiment that East and West Bengal should be a single entity: their politicians are the equivalent of sanctuary city/county/state advocates in the US

    3. Re:aadhaar is controversial because ... by Luthair · · Score: 1

      Anyone can call himself Eustace H. Plimsoll, of The Laburnums, Alleyn Road, West Dulwich and the judge has no way to check if the chap had been up before him or not.

      You realize all brown people don't look alike? /coughs

  4. Re:Stop promoting yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why is the Slashdot mod promoting his own stories here? This is a shit article. Literally the most uninteresting topic on the whole Internet.

    Slashvertisements have been around for decades. Almost, anyway.

    Damn, that's scary.

  5. Would you trust it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Forget about aadhaar being controversial. WhatsApp has a security record so appallingly poor that it may as well have been written by Microsoft. How could anyone in their right mind trust it with their finances?

  6. Imagine 200 million credit cards being hacked by PyRoNeRd · · Score: 2

    This is a honeypot for hackers. Money on the internet has always being a nightmare, credit cards were never designed for the internet. It is going to cost a lots of fees for people to be reimbursed when their accounts are wiped out and their personal detals are stolen.

  7. Aadhar - a good idea... by bayankaran · · Score: 1

    Aadhar may have flaky back-end systems, and will be exposed/leaked/hacked any day from now. (They use the super champion web-scale Mongo DB.)

    Its a good idea, the benefits may outweigh the concerns. That said I do not know why they wanted bio-metric info other than the dudes championing Aadhar had big brother ideas. The ex CEO of Infosys - Nandan Nilekani - was heading Aadhar. He's one of those smart rich fools. He became popular among the East coast crowd when the other smart not-so-rich fool Thomas Friedman quoted him on NYT saying "world is flat".

    --
    Tat Tvam Asi
    1. Re:Aadhar - a good idea... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      why India need a system like aadhaar:
      1.In diverse country like India, 1.3 Billion using 100s of different languages (where letters of name can get changed if translated to other language and back !).
      Bio-metic is only system that can uniquely identify a person with credibility . that enable address fake identity based corruption in society.
      2. Coverage: there are many ID like PAN, DL, voter etc. but coverage is limited , India also have deal with lot of non-citizen , so large scale centralized id system and information collected would be vary valuable informed decision on effective resource allocation and use .
      3. Aaadhar linking to other ID: aadhaar in addition be a unique person identifier for resident ( both citizen and non-citizen ) by linking to other ID /certificates . enable better ratification of other documents. i.e it may do not replace but compliment other facts about the person. Its just like how Wikipedia enable organizing information.
      4. security : any communication over TCP/IP is unsafe and that do not stop us from using internet banking. anyway UPI uses good old SMS service provided by much better regulated telecom providers.
      5. if it can stop just 1 or 2 % of leakage of govt spending , then payback time will be few minutes if not seconds . so its best money spend

  8. Honestly... by thomn8r · · Score: 1

    How many different payment platforms do we really need? It seems like were just laying down more attack surfaces.