The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday lifted the restrictions on Mastercard regarding the on-boarding of new customers nearly a year after the curbs were placed.
“In view of the satisfactory compliance demonstrated by Mastercard Asia/Pacific Pte. Ltd with the RBI circular dated April 6, 2018 on storage of payment system data, the restrictions imposed, vide order dated July 14, 2021, on on-boarding of new domestic customers have been lifted with immediate effect,’’ the banking regulator said in a statement on Thursday.
Last year, the RBI had barred Mastercard from onboarding credit, debit and prepaid card customers for not meeting data storage norms.
The supervisory action was effective from July 22. In April that year, RBI had restricted American Express Banking Corp and Diners Club International from onboarding new domestic customers to their card networks.
In November, it had lifted the curbs on Diners Club International. However, the restrictions against American Express remain. The RBI action came after its direction in April 2018 where it said that all payment system providers should store the entire data relating to their operations by them in a system only in India.
