Considering various repeated requests from industry stakeholders, the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) on Thursday extended the deadline for cards tokenisation till June 30, 2022. Recently the RBI announced the concept of tokenisation, read the full story here.
Tokenisation means replacing credit and debit cards with a token number that the customers can use for online card transactions. In the recent order by the RBI, the timeline for storing card details on file (CoF) is extended till June 30, 2022. The order further added that after the deadline all card details in various e-commerce websites will be deleted. Previously the deadline set by the RBI was December 31, 2021.
The RBI also added that the industry stakeholders must look for alternatives to handle cases like recurring e-mandates, EMI options etc. or post-transaction activity that involves card details of customers.
After June 30, 2022, industry stakeholders, e-commerce businesses and merchants will not be able to save the card information of users and instead of the card number, each card will be assigned a randomised token number. Previously the Indian Bank Association (IBA) had requested the RBI for an extension of the tokenisation deadline.
The RBI has come up with this step to ensure that cards are safe during online transactions and the details are not shared with the merchants during the transaction process. The extension came as the merchants requested at least 6 more months to implement tokenisation stating that this quick decision may cause major disruptions and people will lose trust in digital payments. It will eventually lead to a loss of revenue.
The MPAI (Merchant Payments Alliance of India) and the ADIF (Alliance of Digital India Foundation) have planned to implement this process phase-wise. They added that the merchants and businesses will get 6 months to comply with the rules.
India has more than 985 million cards stored online which are used for 15 million daily transactions amounting to Rs 4,000 crore.
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