The payments industry is in talks with the Reserve Bank of India for an extension of its October deadline for local storage of data, and is hoping for some clarification by the central bank by the end of the month.

Sources said that industry representatives are in discussion with the RBI to shift the deadline by at least three months to the end of the year, which will give companies adequate time to comply with the data localisation rules.

The RBI, through a notification in April this year, had said that all system providers must have their data, including transaction details and information on payment instructions, stored in India by October 15.

“As an industry, we have approached the RBI for some kind of a relaxation and extension of the deadline,” said an executive with a payment company, adding that most companies are keen on following the regulations but still have to work out the processes for it.

Implementing the rules from January 2019 would be ideal, according to industry sources.

The regulations will impact a host of global payment companies such as Mastercard, American Express, PayPal and Visa, as most of them do not have data storage centres in India.

US-based tech giant Google is also understood to have sought extension of the RBI deadline for data localisation for its payment service, Google Pay.

“The challenge posed by foreign payment companies operating in India is that these entities have no servers or data systems in India. Setting up such servers and data systems in India would be both expensive and time consuming. Also, in order to route the information collected and send it to foreign countries, would raise the administrative cost and compliance burden for such companies,” said a recent report by law firm, SS Rana and Company.

The Finance Ministry has also been working with payment companies to address their concerns on the issue.

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