RBI didn’t declare 'Google Pay' an Unauthorised payment system - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
November 5, 2022
A post is being shared on social media claiming that ‘Google Pay’ is not an authorised payment system of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) . According to the post, RBI declared that the users cannot claim money if any issue arises during the payment. Let’s fact-check the post through this article.
Claim: RBI declared that Google Pay is not an authorised payment system.
Fact:  Google Pay is part of the list of third-party apps recognised by NPCI. In 2020, when the rumours that transferring money through Google Pay is not protected by the law went viral, NPCI clarified that Google pay is an authorised Third Party App Provider (TAPA) which operates under the UPI (Unified Payments Interface) framework of NPCI. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To know the veracity of the claim, we ran a  keyword search on the internet, which led us to a news article titled ‘Google Pay not a payment system operator: RBI to HC’. Reportedly, the Reserve Bank of India told the Delhi Hight Court in June 2020 that Google Pay is a Third Party App Provider and does not operate any payment systems and its operations do not violate the law. It points this as the reason for Google Pay not being in the NPCI’s list of authorised payment operators.
We searched on the NPCI’s list of authorised Third Party App Providers and found that  Google Pay is listed here.
In June 2020, NPCI released a clarification on this issue. In a media statement NPCI said “We have come across some quotes on social media which suggest that transferring money through Google Pay is not protected by the law, since the app is unauthorised. RBI has authorised NPCI as a Payment System Operator (PSO) of UPI and NPCI in its capacity as PSO authorises all UPI participants. We would like to clarify that Google Pay is classified as Third Party App Provider (TPAP) that also provides UPI payment services like many others, working through banking partners and operating under the UPI framework of NPCI.”
It further said ‘All transactions made using any of the authorized TPAPs are fully protected by the redressal processes laid out by applicable guidelines of NPCI/RBI and customers already have full access to the same.’ Few news reports on this can be read here and here.
To sum up, Google Pay is an NCPI authorised Third Party App Provider. RBI has never declared that the users cannot claim money if any issue arises during the payment using Google Pay.