'Google Pay' - More time sought to comply with RBI norms
Published: Sep 11, 2018
By TIOLCORPLAWS News Service
NEW DELHI, SEPT 11, 2018: The Internet major Google is ready to comply the RBI's local data storage norm for payment services but wants time until December. During the US visit of Law and IT minister Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Google had conveyed to him that they are ready to comply with RBI rules but want two months more to comply with data storage rule.
Google runs digital payment services in the name 'Google Pay'. The company had claimed 22 mn people use the platform every month and 750 mn transactions had been made with USD 30 bn in annual run rate of transaction value. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had directed all companies running payment services to store data in India by mid-October.
Amid concern around data security, the RBI had asked payment services firms to provide an update on action taken by them to store transaction data in the country in every fortnight, but, the directive of the RBI had seen resistance from foreign firms. The banking regulator had further said that at present "only certain" payment system operators and their outsourcing partners store the payment system data either partly or completely in the country.
Google operates cloud region in India - which comprises three data centres and offers services like big data, storage and networking. Google competes with the likes of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft in this space. However, the company has not explicitly states if the payment related of Indian consumers are stored in these data centers.