The link redirects to the normal rbi site - https://rbi.org.in/ Screenshot / context?

Hmm… Another good reason to get a CC as fast as you are eligible. Very soon, there won’t be any new CCs available in India. Only Visa is left for now …

Feels like govt overreach, to be honest. If the govt gets obsessed with this local data storage mindset, wouldn't small business outside of India stop providing services to Indian customers if they cannot afford to store data locally within the country?

Edited the link, looks like mobile link doesn’t work on desktop.

Data is important and more so going forward and everyone is still figuring out what “localisation” means. In a few years, I am hoping stuff will settle down. While storing data locally is opposite to what the internet is built for, lots of countries have started requiring this including the EU with GDPR. 🤷 @faint-energy-11966 The local data storage is only for companies processing payment related data. So for example banks, payment gateways, etc. And if you are a non-payment related company (for eg a social media company or an ecommerce company), then you need to incorporate within India if you have more than 50L accounts in India. This article has more information

Increasing localisation makes sense from government pov, even though it runs counter to what the internet is built for. For example, post Crimea trouble, Visa & Mastercard stopped working in Russia thanks to sanctions and they later made their own network Mir. While we're no where near this as we're friends with US at present, it's always better to be as independent as possible in critical infrastructure like payment networks.

This doesn't help with payment processing in times of sanctions. Only user data has to be kept in India, the systems processing the payment can be anywhere. Also, if America tells Mastercard to shut service down in India, I don't think even having the processing done locally would help much.😅

Yes, I understand that but it's still a step in the right direction. Though data security & privacy would be the primary objective, if more & more of critical infrastructure is within India, in a worst case national emergency, the government has options.