The ban will be effective from July 22
Mastercard will no longer issue new cards in South Asia. Source: shutterstock.com
Mastercard will no longer issue new credit, debit or prepaid cards in South Asia. The ban comes as the financial service provider fails to comply with local data storage regulations.
Despite the time given as well as enough opportunities to comply, Mastercard is yet to comply with the rules.
New customers will not be impacted by the ban in any way. The Reserve Bank of India expects all banks as well as non-bank card issuers in India to conform to these new regulations which mandate the storage of all the country’s transaction data within servers in India.
India unveiled the local data storage regulations in 2018. Mastercard is also not the first financial institution to be penalized due to non-compliance issues. In April, Diners Club and American Express were restricted from registering new customers for failing to observe the data storage rules.
New Delhi authorities have previously been requested to reconsider the rules by the U.S government, Mastercard as well as Visa. However, the authorities argue that the rules have been put in place to allow unfettered supervisory access.
American Express, Mastercard and Visa had requested for either a change or total disbandment of the rules.
We’ve reported that Mastercard entered into partnership to bring 5G to payments industry.
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