The Reserve Bank of India has mandated all payments system operators working in India to ensure that data related to payment systems operated by them is stored in the country. The operators will have a period of six months to comply with the RBI directive. The central bank will issue detailed instructions in a week. “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,” the RBI said in a report during Thursday’s policy review announcement. “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.” Everyone from Visa, MasterCard, Google, Paytm and others will have to comply with the central bank's new rules. This directive is on par with data storage and oversight rules followed in other Asian countries like China, Japan, Malaysia among others. It must be noted that the RBI's directive only requires data from Indian consumers be stored locally it doesn't explicitly mention that a mirror of this data can't be stored abroad. So, in theory, a company like Visa could store all transaction data in India while storing a mirror of the same in the United States or Europe. Digital payments in India The digital payments space in India has seen major growth…
