Chennai: Foreign payment firms who process transactions outside India must bring all related data back to the country within 24 hours, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said.
The circular comes a week after Union Commerce and Industry Minister, Piyush Goyal met with e-commerce companies and Central bank representatives.
The RBI believes that local storage of such data would provide ‘unfettered supervisory access’ and help in conducting investigations when needed.
Payment transactions can be processed outside, the apex bank clarified in its Wednesday circular, and said the data shall be stored only in India after the processing, sticking to its April 2018 circular.
“In case the processing is done abroad, the data should be deleted from the systems abroad and brought back to India not later than the one business day or 24 hours from payment processing, whichever is earlier. The same should be stored only in India,” it said.
“For cross border transaction data, consisting of a foreign component and a domestic component, a copy of the domestic component may also be stored abroad, if required,” RBI said.
It is expected that the directive would increase infrastructure costs for payment firms.