After RBI's move, card networks may raise rates for tokenisation services

National Payment Council of India chairman says, 'If the networks charge heavily the entire system will fail'

The recent Reserve Bank of India (RBI) norms on tokenisation services, which will be offered by card networks, are likely to result in merchants and payment aggregators incurring a cost as they have to pay a fee to the networks.

The merchants and the payment aggregators, in turn, may pass on the cost to the customers.

The norms, which were issued by the banking regulator released on September 7, allow card networks like Visa and Mastercard to offer the tokenisation service. Tokenisation is the process in which card credentials are de-identified by converting into randomly generated numbers called tokens. The