Data related to payments to be stored only in India: RBI

The Reserve Bank on Wednesday said all data related to payments must be stored only in India and data processed abroad will have to be brought back to the country within 24 hours.

"The entire payment data shall be stored in systems located only in India...," the RBI said in its FAQs on certain implementation issues raised by the Payment System Operators (PSOs).

The RBI had issued a directive in April 2018 on 'Storage of Payment System Data'. It had advised all system providers to ensure that within a period of six months, the entire data relating to payment systems operated by them is stored in a system only in India.

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The FAQs further said there is no bar on the processing of payment transactions outside India if so desired by the PSOs.

"However, the data shall be stored only in India after the processing. The complete end-to-end transaction details should be part of the data," the RBI said.

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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".

Last week, the issue of data localization was raised by several e-commerce firms during their meetings with Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal.

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Earlier this month, RBI Governor, Shaktikanta Das, had announced the decision at the central bank's third bi-monthly monetary policy review of 2019, in which the big decision was the key repo rate being cut by 25 basis points to 5.75 percent - the third consecutive cut in as many reviews.