BENGALURU: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday lifted the restrictions that it had imposed on Mastercard in July last year. Now, Mastercard Asia/ Pacific Pte can on-board new customers. Citing non-compliance on storage of payment system data, the central bank had barred Mastercard Asia/Pacific Pte from onboarding new domestic customers- debit, credit or prepaid onto its card network.
The RBI in its circular in April 2018 said that all system providers should ensure that the entire data relating to payment systems operated by them are stored in a system only in India. “This data should include the full end-to-end transaction details/information collected/carried/processed as part of the message/payment instruction. For the foreign leg of the transaction, if any, the data can also be stored in the foreign country, if required,” the central bank said.
Since Mastercard floated the RBI’s norms, the top card issuer was barred from adding new domestic card customers. Last year, apart from Mastercard, the central bank had also barred American Express and Diners Club from adding new users. Meanwhile, the central bank on Thursday also informed that with immediate effect, it is increasing the limit of e-mandates on cards for recurring payments from Rs 5,000 to Rs 15,000.
“On a review of the implementation of the e-mandate framework and the protection available to customers, it has been decided to increase the aforesaid AFA (Additional factor of authentication) limit from Rs 5,000 to Rs 15,000 per transaction,” the RBI said in a statement.