Indirect lesson from WikiLeaks

One of the developments from WikiLeaks, that really shocked me was the clout Visa and Master Card , the payment gateways have and their swift move to strangle the cash flow for WikiLeaks. What these gateways did for WikiLeaks ,they could tomorrow do for any other organization .

This is a wake up call for India and RBI , that ,over dependence on these payment gateways to process our credit card and debit card processing is asking for trouble and to be at the mercy of these foreign service providers , can eventually put our entire economy at risk. As RBI tries to encourage more and more card based payments to weedout black money we will be more and more at the mercy of these payment gateways.

RBI as part of their vision document did have
"Establishment of e-payment gateways for the benefit of customers (such as the gateways for funds transfers and other account related transactions) and for facilitating e-commerce "

RBI Vision Document

But I'am not sure if RBI has started work on this , but seems this now needs to be expedited , so that, atleast card processing and transactions within the country could be routed through this RBI's gateway instead of these foreign gateways .

There would be other advantages too by having this RBI gateway .

RBI need not charge the 2%  which most these gateways charge, making card transactions more attractive and also prevent this 2% outflow of money from the system.

Image : FreeDigitalPhotos.net,Photographer: renjith krishnan