Will comply with data localisation: Google Play

Google Pay, a leading digital payment service provider, is in the process of complying with the regulations of data localisation, a company official said on Tuesday.

The process needs to be carried out "carefully to prevent any disruption", Google Pay director (product management) Sharath Bulusu said here.

"We will comply with all directives of the government. We are in the process of doing so," he told reporters when asked about the data localisation.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had asked payment companies to ensure that the transaction's data are stored exclusively on local servers.

Generally, data localisation refers to storing data within India.

"We have been providing services and the regulations came later. We will do it without interrupting services to 67 million users. Technically, it is not that easy. However, RBI is very supportive," he said.

Bulusu was here to launch "Google Pay for merchants" in Kolkata.

At the national level, around 3.5 lakh brick-and-mortar retail stores are on the platform and about 3,000 online merchants are accepting Google Pay, he claimed.

As in September 2019, the total transaction for the last 12 months was at USD 110 billion and the number of active users rose three times to 67 million, he said, adding that "almost two-thirds of the payments happened outside the top seven cities" in the country.

At present, charges or MDR (merchant discount rate) are not imposed on merchants and users in order to promote digital payment in the country, he said.

MDR is the rate charged to a merchant for payment processing services.

Asked whether the company will charge users for payments to generate revenue, Bulusu said, there are multiple options that would be evaluated at an appropriate time in future.