India Lifts American Express Ban After Data Storage Compliance
India has decided to lift business restrictions for American Express. The second most populated country in the world, is once again permitting American Express to add new customers after the company showed “satisfactory compliance” with local data storage rules.
The Reserve Bank of India imposed these restrictions in April 2021 for Mastercard, American Express and Diners Club, saying the companies were not complying with data storage rules requiring foreign card networks to store domestic payments data only in India. These business restriction allowed the companies to continue to serve their existing customers in the country, but they couldn’t issue new credit cards and debit cards until compliance issues were resolved.
Mastercard’s ban was lifted in June two months ago. The regulator had also previously removed curbs on Diners Club last November.
“In view of the satisfactory compliance demonstrated by American Express Banking Corp. with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) circular dated April 6, 2018 on Storage of Payment System Data, the restrictions imposed, vide order dated April 23, 2021, on on-boarding of new domestic customers have been lifted with immediate effect,” the RBI statement reads.
The RBI’s 2018 directive regarding data storage has been an issue not only for bank, but for other U.S. firms as well. These companies say that India’s data storage rules increase infrastructure costs and affect their global fraud detection platforms.
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