CBI Announces Digital, Mobile Payment Regulations

The Central Bank of Iran has notified regulations for digital and mobile payments to the banking network.

According to CBI's website, the technology to be used in the payment process is called "tokenization" in which sensitive information like card numbers or passwords are substituted with secret digital tokens.

The service, which would increase the security of payment system to global levels while easing mobile payments, is predicted to become available by May 21.

The directive noted that "although innovation leads to improvement, the security of payment system and risk management should take priority".

CBI has been closely monitoring the latest technological changes and incorporating the ideas of experts and banking officials. It finally came up with the tokenization process for digital and mobile payments.

According to the statement, the tokenization process works as follows:

*A part of the users' sensitive data will be shown as digital tokens. The data will be transferred to the national payment network where digital tokens get back to their original form in a secure area and the payment process continues as normal.

The Tokenization Center–also known as MANA– is responsible for changing the form of the sensitive data to digital tokens and vice versa. Banks can use their own MANA or outsource it to other approved centers, but they are fully responsible for users' data security.

Token Guidance System is named SAHAND, which is embedded in the national payment infrastructure.

MANA gets access to the payment system only through SAHAND.

Tokenization is only available through MANA whose technology and implementation process have been approved by CBI.

Mobile payments have a daily limit in tokenization system and banks or credit institutions in charge of the payment process must abide by the limit.

Further instructions will be announced by CBI's Department of Innovative Technologies.

Banks need to follow the new digital and mobile payment system and inform CBI of their design and implementation process.