RBI Orders Mastercard To Stop Issuing New Credit And Debit Cards From July 22; Know Why

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on July 14 imposed restrictions on Mastercard Asia Pacific Pte Ltd. RBI restricted Mastercard Asia Pacific Pte Ltd from onboarding new domestic customers (debit, credit or prepaid) onto its card network from July 22, citing non-compliance of storage of data in India. RBI order will not impact existing customers of Mastercard, it said. The central bank said Mastercard should advise all card issuing banks and non-banks to conform to these directions.

As per the RBI circular on Storage of Payment System Data dated April 6, 2018, all system providers were directed to ensure that within a period of six months the entire data relating to payment systems operated by them is stored in a system only in India. However, foreign card networks were reluctant to store data in India citing various issues.

In April this year, the RBI had imposed restrictions on American Express Banking Corp and Diners Club International Ltd from on-boarding domestic customers from May 1, 2021, citing non-compliance. Earlier, the RBI had put curbs on HDFC Bank on onboarding new card customers in the wake of tech glitches. Watch the video to know more.