RBI on Tuesday asked online payment firms to monitor transactions-related activities of merchants on their platforms and ensure that they meet its fresh guidelines, in a series of moves aimed at tightening the scrutiny of the sector.
India’s burgeoning yet relatively less-regulated online payments industry has come under RBI’s cross-hairs given the lax oversight of some of the platforms, which handle billions of rupees in daily transactions.
In its fresh guidelines, RBI has set different levels of due diligence based on merchant size and also asked payment aggregators to maintain details of the merchant-employed agents assisting in the process. The new norms shall be applicable in three months, it said. Separately, it said that no entity in a transaction chain made through cards, except by their issuers and networks, can store data starting Aug 1, 2025.