RBI defers tokenisation deadline by six months

‘Card data can be stored till June 30’

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to defer the implementation of tokenisation of debit and credit cards for online transactions by a further six months following representations from stakeholders.

“The timeline for storing of CoF data [actual card data] is extended by six months till June 30, 2022; post this, such data shall be purged,” the central bank said on Thursday.

“In addition to tokenisation, industry stakeholders may devise alternate mechanism(s) to handle any use case (including recurring e-mandates, EMI option) or post-transaction activity (including chargeback handling, dispute resolution, reward/loyalty programme) that currently involves/requires storage of CoF data by entities other than card issuers and card networks,” the RBI said in a circular to Payment System Providers and system participants.