The Competition Commission of India (CCI) on Tuesday dismissed a petition against Facebook-owned WhatsApp that argued that the company was abusing its dominant position in messaging to enter and expand into India’s UPI payments market.
A petition filed in March, by Harshita Chawla, alleged that Facebook-owned WhatsApp was forcing its payment product onto existing messaging users, as the payments service was embedded into the existing app, among other claims. As of July 2019, WhatsApp had 400 million users in India.
To assess the complaint, the watchdog considered two relevant markets i.e. ‘market for over-the-top messaging apps through smartphones in India’ and ‘market for Unified Payment Interface enabled digital payments apps in India’.
According to the regulator, the informant had contended that WhatsApp would leverage its dominance in the upstream market to have a competitive edge over existing competitors.
In a 41-page order, the Competition Commission said there was no violation of Section 4 of the Competition Act. This section pertains to abuse of dominant position.
Although the commission found WhatsApp to be the dominant player in the OTT messaging apps sector, it dismissed any allegations of abuse of this dominant position. The Commission threw out the petition declaring that “there exists no prima facie case of contravention” of competition laws.
Facebook and WhatsApp both opposed the petitioner’s claim that WhatsApp automatically shares WhatsApp Pay users data with Facebook for targeted advertisements, the CCI’s order said. “However, this is neither any concrete allegation, nor any specific information to support the competition concern of the Informant,” the CCI said.
“The apprehensions of the informant, according to the Commission, does not hold much merit. As stated above, the UPI market is quite established with renowned players competing vigorously. In such a market, it seems implausible that WhatsApp Pay will automatically garner a market share merely on account of its pre-installation,” it noted.
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