India working to fix e-commerce payments post-Uber case

The Governor of India’s Reserve Bank has accused U.S. taxi-hailing company Uber Technologies of violating Indian regulations by “bypassing” rules when it used an overseas gateway to conduct transactions in the country. The central bank is working to set a legal framework for the use of advanced e-commerce technologies but in the meantime no one can treat the absence of a solution as an excuse to violate the rules, Rajan told NDTV. Uber did not respond to request for comment on the governor’s remarks.

One of the things we need to do to avoid crony capitalism is have rule of law. So our point was obey our regulation, we will work with you to fix it, to make it more useful for you.

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan

Earlier this year, local taxi companies complained that Uber – which directly processed payments using a customer’s stored credit card information – was not following India’s two-step verification for all e-commerce transactions. In August, the RBI instructed that by Oct. 31, all transactions done with domestic credit cards had to follow the two-step verification process. After the RBI order, Uber changed its payment method and partnered with an India-based virtual wallet provider, Paytm.