RBI Extends Card Tokenisation Deadline By 3 Months

In the latest development on Card Tokenisation, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced today that the deadline for the card tokenisation is now extended by 3 months. The new deadline for the card tokenisation is September 30, 2022. The earlier deadline was June 30, 2022.

Customers using credit or debit cards starting on July 1 will need to enter all necessary information again for each transaction, including the 16-digit card number, expiration date, and card verification value (CVV), in the absence of a substitute mechanism.

Card on File Tokenisation (CoFT), an option that replaces card information with a "token" that is specific to each debit or credit card and merchant platform where it is used, has been developed by payment businesses and card networks Visa, Mastercard, and RuPay.

Today, the RBI twitted, saying, "Reserve Bank of India encourages cardholders to tokenise their cards" with a press release.

In a different circular, the RBI also urged all cardholders to tokenize their cards and outlined the procedure in an effort to raise customer awareness-a step that many in the sector felt was lacking.

With this extension, payment aggregators, payment gateways, and merchants can only store consumer credit/Debit cards in their databases until September 30.

The cardholder must complete a one-time registration process for each card at every website or mobile application of an online or e-commerce merchant in order to create a token under the CoFT framework. During this process, they must enter their card details and grant permission for the creation of a token. This consent is verified through verification using an additional factor of authentication (AFA).