New Delhi
Global card payments major Mastercard has proposed to the Reserve Bank a “certain” date from which it will start deleting data of Indian cardholders from global servers but warned that it would also mean weakening of “safety and security” over a period of time.
In an interaction with PTI, Porush Singh, India and Division President, South Asia, MasterCard, said the company is operating in over 200 countries, and nowhere else it has been asked to delete data from global servers.
The Reserve Bank of India in April issued a new regulation, which came into effect from October 16, requiring payments companies to store all information about transactions involving Indians solely on computers in the country.
Mastercard said all new Indian transaction data is being stored at its technology centre in Pune as of October 6, as required by the RBI directive on data localisation.
It has given a proposal to the RBI to delete back data from certain date but is wary of consequences of such a move, including disputes over transactions.
He further said Mastercard has proposed to the RBI that Indian data would be be stored locally and nowhere else.
The senior Mastercard official, however, added that the company has also informed the central bank about the impact of data deletion.
