A plea has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking direction to the Centre to restrain WhatsApp from proceeding with its payments systems unless it fully complies with provisions of the RBI. The plea filed by organisation Centre for Accountability and Systemic Change said the messaging platform does not comply with provision of mandating Grievance Officer and other laws of India.

To open a bank account, a customer needs to comply with KYC norms laid down by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and various other formalities, the plea said. "WhatsApp is a foreign company with no office or servers in India. To run Payments Service in India, WhatsApp is obligated to have its office and payments in India. "Moreover, it is also required to have a Grievance Officer for users in India. Yet, it is being allowed to continue with its Payments and other services, without any checks," the plea, which is likely to come up for hearing this week, said.