Mastercard, Visa begin storing new Indian data locally

NEW DELHI: Global card payment companies have complied with the Reserve Bank of India’s norms on data localization as Visa and Mastercard have started to store data on domestic transactions from October.

The two are, however, still in talks with the central bank to seek a relaxation of rules on storing data on older transactions.

“In order to ensure that the safety and security of the Indian payment ecosystem is not compromised, and further, that there is no negative impact or disruption to Indian consumers, banks and merchants, Mastercard has submitted its proposal to RBI which confirms storage of data only in India within a specified time frame,” said Mastercard in response to emailed queries from Mint.

“We confirm that all new Indian transaction data is being stored at our technology centre in Pune as of 6th October 2018, as required per the RBI directive on data localisation,” it added. RBI

THE TWO FIRMS ARE IN TALKS WITH RBI TO SEEK RELAXATION OF RULES ON STORING DATA ON OLDER TRANSACTIONS

issued the directive for better monitoring of transaction data. It gave the companies six months to abide and submit their compliance report by October 15.

While most of the companies complied with the RBI directive, there were reports of big global entities like Visa and Mastercard missing the compliance deadline.

Visa CEO Alfred F. Kelly said over the last six months it has been working towards implementing a solution to comply with the Reserve Bank of India norms and that it has met the deadline. “We have submitted a detailed status update and action plan to the RBI, including how we will re-architect our existing global processing systems to fully comply with the data only-in-India requirement,” Kelly said.