NEW DELHI: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will examine concerns around recently released rules that require payments companies to store customer data exclusively in India, a direction which irked the US government with US-based multinationals like Google and Mastercard being impacted by the new stringent regulations.
The government’s statement that the RBI will look into these issues comes after Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal met representatives of technology companies and heard their concerns on Monday. “All the companies who were represented in this meeting put forth their concerns related to RBI data storage requirements and processing related guidelines issued by the RBI. Deputy Governor of RBI, BP Kanungo, assured the industry representatives that the Reserve Bank of India will look into this,” a government statement said.
Last year, the RBI had asked payment firms to ensure that their data was stored exclusively on local servers, setting a tight six-month deadline for compliance. That deadline was reportedly missed by some foreign firms including credit card giants Visa and Mastercard.
The review of the rules comes on the back of trade tensions between India and the US intensifying, with the Americans ending preferential trade quotas for Indian exporters and India raising tariffs on 28 products including almonds and walnuts.
Concerns were also expressed at the meeting about a draft e-commerce policy that requires exclusive local storage and processing of data generated by users in India from various sources including e-commerce platforms, social media and search engines. “The e-commerce industry representatives also put forth their concerns before the Commerce Minister about the e-commerce draft policy which they felt was not adequately consultative,” the statement said.
Goyal also asked e-commerce representatives to send their concerns in writing within 10 days. US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, during his recent visit, while flagging tariff concerns, also raised non-tariff trade issues, including data localisation.
Putting heads together
Companies that participated in the meeting with Piyush Goyal included Facebook, Dell, Amazon, SAP, Google, Cognizant, Paypal, IBM, VISA, Microsoft, American Express, Infosys, Reliance Jio Infocomm, OLA, Makemytrip, flipkart, Shopclues, Yatra and Snapdeal.