The Reserve Bank of India on 28th July 2022, has notified that with effect from October 1, 2022, no entity in the card transaction/payment chain, other than the card issuers and/or card networks, shall store CoF (card-on file) data, and any such data stored previously shall be purged.
Based on review of the issues involved and after detailed discussions with all stakeholders, RBI has advised that there shall be no change in the effective date of implementation of the requirements – all entities, except card issuers and card networks, shall purge the CoF data before October 1, 2022.
Further, for ease of transition to an alternate system in respect of transactions where cardholders decide to enter the card details manually at the time of undertaking the transaction (commonly referred to as “guest checkout transactions”), the following are being permitted as an interim measure –
- Other than the card issuer and the card network, the merchant or its Payment Aggregator (PA) involved in settlement of such transactions, can save the CoF data for a maximum period of T+4 days (“T” being the transaction date) or till the settlement date, whichever is earlier. This data shall be used only for settlement of such transactions, and must be purged thereafter.
- For handling other post-transaction activities, acquiring banks can continue to store CoF data until January 31, 2023.
