It’s been a turbulent year for leading brands when it came to data and security breaches. Yahoo, Uber, Facebook and Equifax to name a few were left dry when reportedly millions of customers’ data (personal & credit card) were stolen by hackers. These scandals had made us rethink about consumer’s data and most importantly their transactional data. In a time, when data is the new fuel, maintaining data integrity is of prime importance. If we’re unable to protect the data of customers, then we are looking at a world where the trust in payments technology might reach an all-time low.
Uber to pay $148 million to settle claims related to a large-scale data breach that exposed the personal information of more than 25 million of its US users.
The payments industry has many positive things to look forward to in the years to come. But, with every new technological innovation comes the threat of fraudsters working around it to exploit. Cyber attacks and data breaches are on the rise around the world – be it with payments or non-payments related businesses.
The industry could expect $31.3 billion in global card losses in 2018, which have increased by 18 percent every year since 2013.
What is Data Privacy?
We live in a world where we depend on mobile apps for everything. Every move we make is stored as a piece of data. In most cases, people don’t know that all their digital actions and choices are being recorded. The common public are unaware of their rights when it comes to data privacy. At the end of the day, the customer needs have complete ownership of their data and should be able to control its use. To protect consumer data, new regulations and guidelines have been brought in which mandate such companies to have transparency when it comes to data and how it should be stored and so on.
Cyberattacks cost the global economy 1% of the annual GDP
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
GDPR standardizes the existing best practices across multiple countries, especially in Europe. Thus, making sure data protection is the same across all markets and that consumer data rights are consistently enforceable by law. GDPR is a regulation in the European Union which seeks to protect data and ensure its privacy. It does that by forcing all payment companies to ensure that privacy is built into all the products and services, thereby pushing the anonymity and safety of data to the highest level. The GDPR was adopted in April 2016, entered into force on 24 May 2016 and became fully applicable from 25 May 2018.
It significantly revises how consumers’ personal data will be protected and when it comes to data privacy, payments are the most sensitive areas for consumers.
RBI Guidelines and the Future of Data Privacy
The Reserve Bank of India has mandated the compulsory storage of data within the country and a committee was formed to investigate the privacy issues. It has also asked payment companies to submit their fortnightly updates on the progress made in this regard. ‘Regulations’ and ‘Compliance’ are going to be become to the two biggest keywords in the payment industry in the years to come. After all, without the safety and security of customer data, we are looking at a future of uncertainty in the payments industry. If we keep moving with the changing payment technology and the evolving regulatory processes, then we have nothing to worry. But it will need all the collaborators in the payment ecosystem to come together as one to ensure that we create new benchmarks when it comes to data privacy and follow it without fail.
