American Express (Amex) has put on hold its plan to share customer data with National E-Governance Services Limited (NeSL), the company said in an email sent to one of its customers. Earlier on March 1, Amex emailed its credit-card holders that it will be sharing financial information about their card accounts with NeSL starting April 2022. Amex cited a 2017 RBI circular as the reason for this decision, but cardholders and other experts raised concerns about the legality of this data-sharing mandate by RBI, as well as the privacy implications of such data sharing and the precedence it sets for future sharing of financial information of Indian citizens. Read: Deep Dive – The Privacy Implications And Legality Of RBI’s Mandate To Banks To Share Credit Card Information With NeSL Reacting to Amex's decision to backtrack, Srikanth Lakshmanan of Cashless Consumer Collective, tweeted: "Small victories for keeping our eyes open. We need more watchful eyes to #SaveOurPrivacy" Lakshmanan had earlier criticised Amex's decision to share data with NeSL for going against the Credit Information Companies (Regulation) Act, 2005, and for taking place without any law backing it. Why has Amex put the data sharing on hold? In the email dated April 2 and sent to Amex cardholder Vasundhar, Amex said: "As per matter highlighted we previously advised you that we would begin reporting your Card account information to NeSL in April 2022. This has been postponed while we are in discussion with RBI on the same. We would like to apprise that our…
