The rupee in a USD-dominated world; RBI and storage of card data; A youtube show, “Everything is everything”
The rupee in a USD-dominated world
There is much angst about the role of the USD in the world and many people think there are pathways for other currencies to become more important. My column in the Business Standard yesterday was An Indian view on dollar domination. I argue that the USD is likely to remain predominant, and that this is consistent with India’s interests in coming decades.
RBI and storage of card data
In March 2020, RBI interrupted the storage of card data by merchants. Renuka Sane, Bhargavi Zaveri-Shah and I had written a paper on this subject. This paper has appeared as Should consumers be prohibited from storing card data on the internet?, Renuka Sane, Ajay Shah, Bhargavi Zaveri-Shah, Indian Law Review, July 2023. 10.1080/24730580.2023.2230827.
The abstract reads: In March 2020, the Reserve Bank of India’s guidelines on Payment Aggregators and Payment Gateways prohibited merchants from storing data on cards used by customers. This paper argues that such a prohibition on card data storage impacts upon the ease of transactions for consumers, and effectively tilts consumer preference towards other payment instruments. This runs the risk of technological choices in the industry being made or substantially shaped by the regulator. The documents released lack a cost-benefit analysis of this prohibition and do not demonstrate that the chosen intervention is the best one. This raises concerns in the light of emerging Indian jurisprudence on the standards of regulatory governance to be met by statutory regulatory agencies. We show alternative approaches to address concerns relating to breaches of card information stored by consumers on the internet. These include better security standards and liability frameworks.
A youtube show, “Everything is everything”
Amit Varma and I have launched a weekly show on youtube, Everything is everything. The first two episodes are Episode 1, Halfway from coal halfway to diamond and Episode 2, Is the singularity near?. New episodes will drop every Friday. Please tell us how to do this better.