To Ensure Safety, Global Payment Firms Told To Store Data In India

In a move that could impact foreign players such as Google and WhatsApp, the Reserve Bank of India has asked all payment companies to store data within India. While the RBI’s move is aimed at better supervision, it will mean that global players will have to set up a local server for their payment platforms.

“Ensuring the safety and security of payment systems data by adoption of the best global standards and their continuous monitoring and surveillance is essential to reduce the risks from data breaches while maintaining a healthy pace of growth in digital payments,” RBI said while issuing the order.

“It is observed that at present only certain payment system operators and their outsourcing partners store the payment system data, either partly or completely, in the country. In order to have unfettered access to all payment data for supervisory purposes, it has been decided that all payment system operators will ensure that data related to payment systems operated by them are stored only inside the country within a period of six months,” it added. While most of the Indian payment system operators already comply with the RBI regulation, global players such as Amazon, Google and WhatsApp could be impacted.

Jitendra Gupta, founder of fintech firm PayU, said in a tweet: “Every payment firm needs to set up India operations for hosting and data management. It makes entry a bit tougher for the foreign player who generally has unified systems and work across the globe with same application servers.”

When contacted by BusinessLine, Amazon and Google said they are studying the RBI policy and would not be able to comment further.