TROUBLE@PAYTM

ANALYSTS DO NOT SEE A NEAR-TERM SOLUTION TO PAYTM’S PROBLEMS, AS RBI HAS FOUND LAPSES AFTER A COMPREHENSIVE IT AUDIT

- M.G. Arun

It’s an hour of reckoning for financial services firm Paytm, often touted as the poster boy of India’s digital payments revolution. On January 31, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) asked Paytm Payments Bank Limited (PBPL) to stop new credit and deposit operations, top-ups, fund transfers and all other banking operations by February 29. Customers will only be allowed to withdraw their balances from their accounts with PBPL.

Paytm’s payment bank hosts over 330 million wallet accounts, says financial advisory firm Macquarie. The RBI order means even existing Paytm customers cannot carry out basic banking operations like credit, deposits, fund transfers, UPI transactions, bill payments, user wallets and FASTag payments, the last a space where Paytm has nearly 17 per cent market share and some 60 million users. For FY23, Paytm had posted Rs 7,990 crore in revenues.