New Delhi: Digital payments platform PhonePe on Monday said it has informed the Reserve Bank of India of its full compliance with the data localisation mandate to ensure payments data of Indian users is stored within the country.The RBI, in April, had issued a circular instructing all payments system providers in the country to ensure that data relating to systems operated by them is stored only in India and had set a deadline of October 15.
The central bank’s data localisation policy had elicited mixed response from the payment services industry. While some of the prominent domestic payment companies like Paytm and PhonePe have been supportive of the dictum, global players like Google (that offers Google Pay) had argued for free movement of data.Some international players have appealed for more time for compliance and also asked that they be allowed to mirror the data.”We have already notified RBI that all our data systems are fully localised. Our data processing was always localised.
In addition to that, now 100 per cent of our storage is also localised,” PhonePe said.It added that the localisation effort was “done well within the time-frame prescribed to us”.
Paytm said critical data must not be allowed to go out of the country, not even for processing. “We have complied to this mandate since day one and have welcomed this initiative right from the beginning. It is important that we do not become mere internet colonies for global companies, and make every organisation accountable towards the security and privacy of data of our fellow countrymen,” a Paytm spokesperson said. WhatsApp has already said it has developed a system to store payments-related data in India.
An Amazon spokesperson said “compliance with local laws and regulation is a top priority for us in all the countries we operate in. We continue to work closely with the regulators towards this”. Google is learnt to have agreed to follow the RBI’s local data storage norm for payment services but has asked for time until December to ensure compliance, a government source had indicated recently.
Govt, RBI against extending deadline
The government and the RBI are not in favour of extending the Monday’s deadline for local data storage by foreign payment companies, an official said.The government would not relent under pressure from the global payment firms and the RBI is unlikely to extend the October 15 deadline for data localisation, the official said. “We are not in favour of extension. Also, data mirroring is not an option,” the official told reporters.
Data localisation is an act of storing data on any device that is physically present within the borders of a particular country where the data was generated. Two top American Senators John Cornyn and Mark Warner have asked Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to adopt a soft stance on data localisation, warning that India’s policy on the issue will adversely affect American businesses in the country.
“Data localisation requirements, such as those contained in the draft data protection bill and draft national e-commerce policy framework, will have negative impacts on the ability of companies to do business in India, may undermine your own economic goals and will likely not improve the security of Indian citizens’ data,” they said.
