RBI asks payment operators to store data only in India, comply by October 15

Asian countries such as China, Japan and Malaysia follow the same data storage rule.

The move comes after the RBI observed that not all system providers store the payments data in India.

“In order to ensure better monitoring, it is important to have unfettered supervisory access to data stored with these system providers as also with their service providers / intermediaries/ third party vendors and other entities in the payment ecosystem,” the central bank said.

It had proposed the move first on Thursday after the monetary policy announcement in the Statement on Development and Regulatory Policies.

In the last few years, digital payment has been on the rise in India. Transactions through UPI or Unified Payments Interface in February alone stood at 171.2 million accounting for Rs 19,126 crore in value of transactions. Of these, Paytm accounted for 40 percent of the transactions while the rest were done on apps such as PhonePe (16 percent) and BHIM (5.8 percent).

In January 2018, Rs 2.96 lakh crore were transacted through debit cards and Rs 41,778 crore was transacted through credit cards. In February, data by RBI showed this number was a tad lower at Rs 2.84 lakh crore transacted through debit cards and Rs 37,981 crore through credit cards.

The data also revealed that the number of debit cards in the country stood at to 846.7 million, while a total of 36.24 million credit cards were in operation, RBI data said.

As per RBI mandate, "System providers shall submit the System Audit Report (SAR) on completion of the requirement... The audit should be conducted by CERT-IN empaneled auditors certifying completion of activity…The SAR duly approved by the Board of the system providers should be submitted to the Reserve Bank not later than December 31, 2018."