The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) imposed restrictions on Mastercard Asia Pacific Pvt Ltd from onboarding new domestic customers (debit, credit or prepaid) onto its card network from July 22, citing non-compliance of storage of data in India.

That makes Mastercard the third entity to be barred on these grounds after the RBI had in April told American Express and Diners Club International to not get new domestic customers.

The entity (Mastercard) has been found to be non-compliant with the directions on storage of payment system data, notwithstanding the lapse of considerable time and adequate opportunities given, a statement issued by the RBI said on Wednesday.

The RBI order will not impact existing customers of Mastercard, it said adding that it has also asked all banks and non-bank lenders working with Mastercard for issuance of debit, credit, or prepaid cards to adhere to the RBI regulations on storage of payment system data.

The central bank said Mastercard should advise all card issuing banks and non-banks to conform to these directions.

“The supervisory action has been taken in exercise of powers vested in RBI under Section 17 of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007 (PSS Act),” the RBI said.

Mastercard is a payment system company, operating a card network in the country under the PSS Act. Along with Mastercard, Visa, and RuPay are the other big card issuers in the country.  Visa is the largest player in the space followed by Mastercard and RuPay according to industry estimates.

As per the RBI circular on Storage of Payment System Data dated April 6, 2018, all system providers were directed to ensure that within a period of six months the entire data relating to payment systems operated by them is stored in a system only in India. However, foreign card networks were reluctant to store data in India citing various issues.

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