PCI welcomes RBI extension of 6 months for storing card data

Mumbai, December 23, 2021: Payments Council of India (PCI), the representative body of payment system participants in India, welcomes the RBI decision to extend the timeline of storage of card data for another 6 months. This is much needed relief for the industry which has been working hard towards the on-ground implementation of COFt and integration with various stakeholders.
PCI in its representation to RBI seeking additional time of 6 months for implementation mentioned, “While the industry has made considerable progress towards this change but given the vast width of the country to be covered a lot of work still needs to be done and hence the industry will use this timeframe to confidently implement this solution in its entirety to achieve the true potential as envisioned by RBI”
Welcoming the RBI notification PCI Chairman and Director, Infibeam Avenues, Vishwas Patel said “We would like to thank RBI for giving industry this much needed time to scale up its efforts and work towards achieving the true intent of this guideline as envisaged by the central bank. PCI will work with the industry and RBI to come up with solutions  to handle any use cases such as refunds, emanates and post transaction activity including chargeback handling, dispute resolution, reward / loyalty programme, etc.,  that currently involves / requires storage of CoF data by entities other than card issuers and card networks”
“We are very thankful to RBI for having provided an additional 6 months to the payments system participants and merchants to implement comprehensive card on file solutions. This will greatly benefit the ecosystem, in a seamless migration and also in building upon alternate mechanism(s) to handle various use-cases.  As an industry, we are firmly committed to achieving the RBI vision of enhanced customer protection of customer card credentials and have all embarked on that journey “, said Srinivasu MN, Founder, Billdesk and Co chair of the BBPS committee at PCI
The industry will utilize the next 6 months to implement appropriate uniform solutions for seamless migration for card holders as well as ensuring adequate security for storage.

BRIEF
Falcon co-founder Prabhtej Singh Bhatia said, “The RBI’s extension of card tokenisation is a big relief and brings the much required cheer among businesses and industry stakeholders who were grappling to meet the deadline of December 31. Card tokenisation in itself is important from a consumer security perspective and the UIDAI has shown successfully how Aadhaar tokenisation for authentication has helped curb misuse of Aadhaar numbers. With the Regulator extending the deadline to June 2022, it gives banks, acquirers, issuers and merchants some time to create an implementation framework around this on priority, to help their customers make a smooth transition.”