The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to defer the implementation of tokenization of debit and credit cards for online transactions by six months following representations from stakeholders.
“Timeline for Storage of COF Data” [actual card data] has been extended for six months till June 30, 2022; Post this, such data will be purged,” the central bank said on Thursday.
“In addition to tokenization, industry stakeholders may create alternative mechanisms to handle any use case (including recurring e-mandate, EMI option) or post-transaction activity (including chargeback handling, dispute resolution, reward/loyalty programmes). “Requires storage of COF data by card issuers and entities other than the card network,” RBI said in a circular to payment system providers and system participants.
Earlier, RBI, through a circular on “Guidelines on Regulation of Payment Aggregators and Payment Gateways” dated March 17, 2020, allowed authorized non-bank payment aggregators and merchants onboarded by them to transfer card data (COF) with effect from June. was prohibited from being stored. 30, 2021.
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