SUMMARY
Truecaller’s entire Indian user data is hosted in India
RBI had asked payment companies to store data in India
Amazon started storing data locally for its payments services
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After storing data for users of its payments services locally in India, Sweden-based Truecaller has now taken up the lead to store data of all its Indian users locally.
In a statement, the company said that its entire Indian user data is stored in India, and it is one of the first international companies to do so. “This is a user-centric move that is aimed at safeguarding personal data and encouraging more transparency in the ecosystem,” the statement said.
In April 2018 circular, the Reserve Bank of India had asked all payment system operators in the country to store data related to their Indian customers locally to ensure that user details remain secure in case of privacy breaches. Payment companies had been given time until October 15 to comply with these guidelines.
Several international companies had lobbied for extension in the deadline, however, RBI has refused the requests. Local tech-enabled companies such as PhonePe, Paytm, InMobi, Ola, and Freshworks, among others, had been advocating for strict data localisation laws for the past few months.
Global search giant Google had confirmed that it would store its data locally, the company also iterated that it was in favour of cross-border data flow as it makes economic sense. At the same time, US ecommerce company Amazon had started storing local payments data in its servers in India without making a copy of it in its overseas servers by October-end.
Truecaller, however, is now taking extra precautions and said the company has committed locally stored data and investments in its India infrastructure. It also claimed to have doubled the search result speed for its core services like Caller ID and Spam detection within the app to ensure its 100 Mn users are protected from unwanted calls and potential fraud.
Nami Zarringhalam, cofounder and chief strategy officer at Truecaller said, “This also safeguards our user’s privacy and is our way of showing commitment towards our users and their data while being compliant with laws of the geographies we operate in.”
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