Reserve Bank The Government of India (RBI) on Friday announced the extension of the deadline tokenization For another three months for debit and credit cards 30 september2022 reserve Bank of India The U.S. had earlier set a deadline of June 30, under which merchants and payment aggregators were to delete all card details and replace it with tokens.

The regulator said that the industry stakeholders Some issues related to the implementation of the framework with respect to guest checkout transactions have been highlighted. Furthermore, the number of transactions processed using the token is yet to gain traction among all categories of merchants, it said. The regulator said these issues are being dealt with in consultation with the stakeholders.

“This extended time period can be used by the industry to prepare (a) all stakeholders to handle tokenized transactions; (b) transaction processing based on tokens; (c) all post-processing related to guest checkout transactions. Implementing an alternative mechanism to handle transaction activities (including chargeback handling and settlement) that currently involve/require the storage of CoF data by entities other than the card issuer and the card network; and (d) token generation and transactions To create public awareness about the process of using them to do so,” the regulator said.

RBI also encouraged cardholders to tokenize their cards for their own safety. About 195 crore tokens have been created so far. The option to generate tokens is voluntary for the cardholders. Those who do not wish to generate tokens can continue to transact as before by entering the card details manually while transacting.

Tokenization is a process by which card details are replaced with a unique code or token, allowing online purchases to be made without exposing sensitive card details.

As per the latest RBI order, all merchants will have to delete customer debit and credit card data and replace card payments with unique tokens for all online, point-of-sale and in-app transactions on or before June 30 Will happen.

ET reported on June 6 that many large online merchants were nervous about the ecosystem’s readiness to handle transaction and token volumes, while also wanting to avoid disruption to payments for consumers.

Several large merchants had earlier told ET that they were unsure about the scalability of the payment network for tokenization, as they feared disruption to the payment experience of consumers.