Should Consumers Be Prohibited From Storing Card Data on the Internet?

In March 2020, the Reserve Bank of India's guidelines on Payment Aggregators and Gateways prohibited merchants from storing data cards used by customers. This paper argues that a total prohibition card storage is problematic as it affects ease transactions for consumers, effectively tilts consumer preference towards other payment instruments. runs risk technological choices in industry being made or substantially shaped regulator. The documents released lack cost-benefit analysis this do not demonstrate chosen intervention best one. raises concerns light emerging Indian jurisprudence standards regulatory governance to be met statutory agencies. We show alternative approaches address relating breaches information stored consumers internet. These include better security standards, tokenization, liability frameworks.