Visa’s global president Ryan McInerney has said the company is “extremely committed” to abide by the RBI’s data localisation mandate and also denied reports that global companies initially seemed averse to the mandate in an interview to the Economic Times “Since our commitment to India is long term, measured in decades, we want to work in a way the RBI feels is the right way to work,” he told the newspaper. Last September, a month before the RBI’s rules on data localisation came into effect, T R Ramachandran, Visa’s group country manager for India and south Asia, said the central bank had asked payment companies to send it fortnightly updates on their progress in storing payment data in India. The RBI's mandate, passed last year, requires all payments-related data generated in India to be stored within the country. Zuckerberg ‘highly concerned’ about data localisation but WhatsApp working to comply In an earnings call with investors last week, Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook won’t store sensitive data in countries where it might be improperly accessed because of weak rule of law or governments that can forcibly get access to your data. He reiterated his stance against data localisation, without mentioning any country specifically. “More countries following the approach of authoritarian regimes adopting strict data localisation policies where governments can more easily access people’s data, and I’m highly concerned about that future,” Zuckerberg said. But earlier this month WhatsApp said it was working to comply with the RBI’s data localisation rules. The messaging…
