Global card payments brand Mastercard has intimated the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that it will soon start deleting data of Indian cardholders from its global servers. Further, the company also warned that this process will weaken the safety and security over a period of time.
“The company is operational across more than 200 countries, and no country elsewhere had asked us to delete data from global servers,” said Porush Singh, India and Division President, South Asia, MasterCard.
In its new regulation, which came into effect from October 16, the RBI directed the payments companies to store all information about transactions involving Indians solely on computers in the country.
Reacting to this guideline, Mastercard said that all new Indian transaction data is being stored at its technology centre in Pune as of October 6.
In addition, it also said that all the back data will be deleted from a certain date but is worried on the consequences of such a move, including disputes over transactions.
“The proposal we have given (to RBI) is that we will delete it (data) from everywhere else, whether it is the card number, transaction details. The data will only be stored in India … we will start deleting that…,” Singh said.
