New Delhi: The country’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, has fired a serious warning at the big technology companies leading the charge in India’s financial system, from Google Pay and Amazon Pay to PhonePe. It said big technology firms could become “too big to fail,” implying that their collapse could hurt the entire economy.
Over the last few years, the digital payment market in India has exploded, with billions of transactions being handled by tech giants. The RBI has said that this massive dependence on a few companies could create systemic risks-especially if the latter face cyberattacks, data leaks, or financial instability.
The bank also voiced apprehension over the firms’ repository of customer data and wants stricter rules regarding data privacy and transparency, coupled with financial accountability.
The experts say that the RBI seeks to avoid a too big to fail situation as experienced during the global financial crisis in 2008, whereby large banks were bailed out as their collapse would hurt the economy. Similarly, today the tech giants are in control of digital payment systems, platforms for lending, and even small investments.
