reserve Bank of India indicated on Friday that it would not extend the deadline to implement 1 October tokenization Regarding card based payment. lieutenant governor T Rabi Sankar told reporters that the central bank would not hold back the innovation as some stakeholders were unprepared for implementation.

“We have feedback from almost all stakeholders that it (token) is completely ready,” Shankar said. “I believe there are some participants who may not be ready, but this will be largely due to their unwillingness to comply. We do not believe we need to ensure the safety of customers due to such a lack efforts should be stopped. They may take a little more time, but they will all be on the road soon.”

Shankar said that around 35 crore tokens have already been created and in September about 40% transactions were done using tokens, which are worth Rs 63 crore.

According to the central bank’s rules, all merchants will have to delete the customer’s debit and credit card details and replace the card payment with a unique token before October 1.

reserve Bank of India In July, it said it would not extend the deadline for storing card data and directed all stakeholders except card issuers and card networks to purge customer data before October 1. This is the third such extension in the last 18 months.

“Since we issued the regulations in March 2020, we have been in constant communication with all stakeholders to ensure that the transition to the token framework goes smoothly,” he said. “As you know, we have given several extensions so that the system can be switched easily. We just wanted to make sure that customer security is not compromised due to problems in the implementation of the token.”

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.

ET recently reported that top merchants had approached the regulator directly with banks, payment aggregators and card networks to ensure that recurring token-based payments are extensively tested to avoid disruptions .

Without seeking an extension directly, the Merchant Payments Alliance of India (MPAI) had requested the RBI in a letter dated September 26 to demonstrate a similar level of success rate in token and card-based payments to system participants. Make it mandatory This was also requested in the letter. That all existing e-mandates based on the card details are immediately transferred to tokens.