Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) extended the credit card, debit card tokenization deadline. The apex bank extended the deadline for card data storage and tokenization implementation to September 30, 2022. The deadline was earlier fixed at June 30. The decision was taken as merchants and payment aggregators pointed out issues related to the implementation.
‘These issues are being dealt with in consultation with the stakeholders, and to avoid disruption and inconvenience to cardholders, the Reserve Bank has today announced extension of the said timeline of June 30, 2022, by three more months, i.e., to September 30, 2022’, said RBI.
Also Read; India’s foreign exchange reserves fell to all-time low
RBI asked all stakeholders to use this time for preparation for handling tokenized transactions and to implement alternate mechanism(s) to handle all post-transaction activities. They must also use this time to create public awareness about the process of creating tokens and using them to undertake transactions.
Under the debit card and credit card tokenization rule, when a customer starts an online transaction, the merchant will initiate tokenization. It will ask for your consent to tokenize customer’s card. Once given consent, the merchant will send a tokenization request to the card network. The card network will then create a token, which will act as a proxy to the 16-digit card number and send it back to the merchant. The merchant will save this token for future transactions. You will also have to enter your CVV and OTP like before to approve transaction. If you want to use another card, the same process is to be followed again.
But, this is not mandatory. A customer can choose whether or not to let his / her card tokenized. In that case, the customer will have to re-enter all card details while purchasing anything online.
RBI in last year released debit card and credit card tokenization guidelines. As per the guidelines, merchants were prohibited from storing the data of customers’ cards on their servers. This was to protect and secure customer data. The deadline for adoption of card tokens across the country was extended by six months from January 1, 2022 to July 1, 2022.
As per the RBI, till date, about 19.5 crore tokens have been created. Opting for CoFT (i.e., creating tokens) is voluntary for the cardholders.
Post Your Comments