India's burgeoning yet relatively less-regulated online payments industry has come under the RBI's crosshairs given the lax oversight of some of the platforms, which handle billions of rupees in daily transactions.

In its fresh guidelines, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has set different levels of due diligence based on merchant size and also asked payment aggregators to maintain details of the merchant-employed agents assisting in the process.

The new norms shall be applicable in three months, it said.

The RBI has also directed payment firms to complete the due diligence process by Sept. 30, 2025, and ensure that marketplaces onboarded by them do not collect and settle funds for services not offered through their platforms.

Payment companies shall ensure that transactions processed by them are in line with a merchant's business profile and have risk-based payment limits, it added.

Separately, it also said that no entity in a transaction chain made through cards, except by their issuers and networks, can store data starting from Aug. 1, 2025.

(Reporting by Swati Bhat in Mumbai and Hritam Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)