RBI/Representational Image
The last date for local data storage by foreign payment companies may not witness an extension as the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is unlikely to stretch the October 15 deadline, an official said. The government would not relent under pressure from the global payment firms, he added.
"We are not in favour of extension. Also, data mirroring in not an option," the official told reporters.
Data localisation is an act of storing data on any device that is physically present within the borders of a particular country where the data was generated.
Two top American Senators John Cornyn and Mark Warner have warned that India's policy on the issue will adversely affect American businesses in the country and have asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to adopt a soft stance on data localisation.
"Data localisation requirements, such as those contained in the draft data protection bill and draft national e-commerce policy framework, will have negative impacts on the ability of companies to do business in India, may undermine your own economic goals and will likely not improve the security of Indian citizens' data," they said.
Global payment companies were allotted six months’ time by the Reserve Bank in April, to store transaction data of Indian customers within India. The deadline ends Monday.
An extension to the October 15 deadline has reportedly been sought by global financial technology companies.
Foreign payment companies had also reportedly asked the RBI to allow data mirroring which would mean they can store a copy of the data overseas as well.
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" in order to ensure better monitoring of payment service operators, the RBI had said in April.
"All system providers shall ensure that the entire data relating to payment systems operated by them are stored in a system only in India," it had said.
The data should include the full end-to-end transaction details, information collected/carried/ processed as part of the message/payment instruction, the RBI said.
