Mastercard complies with Indian directive to store new data locally

Global card payments giant Mastercard is storing its new Indian transaction data locally, the company said on Tuesday, as it starts to comply with a regulatory directive that US companies unsuccessfully lobbied to dilute.

The Indian central bank in April said companies such as Mastercard, Visa and American Express will from October need to store their payments data “only in India” so that the regulator could have “unfettered supervisory access”.

The directive sparked an aggressive lobbying effort from US companies, which said it would increase their infrastructure costs, hit their global fraud detection platforms and affect planned investments in India. Their request that they be allowed to store data both locally and offshore was declined.

Mastercard has started storing all its new payments transaction data in India at its technology centre in the western city of Pune. It has submitted a proposal to the Reserve Bank of India for “storage of data only in India within a specified timeframe”.

Visa too has started storing a copy of its new transaction data locally and had sought time from the central bank to comply with the requirement to store Indian data only within the country, two industry sources said.

Visa and American Express did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Government sources have said that stringent data localisation measures are essential for gaining easier access to data during investigations. India is working on an overarching law that calls for the storing of all critical personal data in India. Ecommerce and cloud computing policies are being developed.

Two US senators earlier in October called on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to soften India’s stance on data localisation, warning that measures requiring it represent “key trade barriers” between the two nations.