Only domestic payments enabled for Alt News, says Razorpay CEO Harshil Mathur

Razorpay the payment gateway used by Alt News to receive donations on Friday said only domestic payments were enabled for the factchecking website and foreign transactions were not allowed without FCRA approvalDelhi Police had last week told a Delhi court that they were investigating alleged violations of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act FCRA by Alt News in their probe against cofounder Mohammed ZubairIn a statement posted on his Twitter handle Razorpay cofounder and CEO Harshil Mathur said the payment gateway had shared with investigating authorities only specific data within the scope of the investigationAlso Read Supreme Court to hear today Alt News Mohammad Zubair plea seeking protection from arrest quashing UP police FIRWhile I am not allowed to share the specifics owing to the ongoing investigation I want to state that the concerned business was only enabled to receive domestic payments inline with our policy to not allow international transactions without FCRA approval for donation pages he said without directly naming Alt NewsAmid concerns over the data that Razorpay may have shared he said the specific scope of the investigating agencies request was only to determine whether there were any foreign donationsAnd therefore donors PAN address pin code etc were not shared which we believed were outside the scope of the investigation he saidThe investigation into Alt News payments follows Zubairs arrest on a complaint from a Twitter account that said he insulted Hindus in 2018 when he posted an image from an old Hindi movieOn Alt News saying they were not contacted before the information was shared Mathur said Razorpay had reached out on registered mobile numbers of the business but could not reach themIn hindsight we understand it may have been difficult for them to get on the phone in such a situation and we could have tried to find other channels he saidGiving details he said the firm on Monday received a written notice for transaction data for a specific time periodWe immediately reached out to the authorities to understand the scope and reasons for the request A Razorpay senior leader went from Bengaluru to Delhi to speak to the authorities he said As is our process we consulted multiple legal experts on this and got a unanimous view that we have to comply with the requestRazorpay temporarily disabled Alt News business account awaiting clarity on the purpose of the investigation to safeguard and prevent consumer losses he said As soon as we got that clarity we immediately reenabled payments for themHe also said policy experts and legal counsels across the country have given an undivided view that it was necessary for Razorpay to comply with the legal requestWe have always championed the need for an appropriate data privacy law in the country he said We are not perfect to anyone who feels that there is something else we could have done my DMs are always open please give us feedbackThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever