Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm resigns from payments bank board following RBI crackdown.
In an announcement on Monday, Paytm, an Indian digital payments company, revealed that Vijay Shekhar Sharma will be resigning from his positions as non-executive chairman and board member of its payments bank unit. This decision comes as the company undergoes a restructuring of its board following regulatory actions by the central bank.
According to sources, Paytm is likely to partner with four banks to enable UPI transactions
TroubledPaytm is likely to partner with Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, State Bank of India and Yes Bank to process transactions through the popular Unified Payments Interface (UPI), two sources aware of the development said.
The central bank has asked Paytm Payments Bank, the banking unit of Paytm, to cease operations by March 15, leading to disruptions in the operations of the popular payment app.
UPI is India’s real-time payment system operated by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). It allows users to transfer money between banks.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) last week asked the NPCI to look into Paytm’s request to become a third-party app provider and facilitate four to five banks to serve as its service providers.
“Negotiations with banking partners are underway and Paytm wants to start this process with large banks that have the technical bandwidth to handle large volumes seamlessly,” one of the sources said.
The individuals did not want to be identified because they are not authorized to speak to the media.
HDFC Bank, Yes Bank, SBI, Paytm did not immediately respond to emails from Reuters seeking comment. Axis Bank and NPCI spokespersons declined to comment.
“Paytm is likely to join Axis Bank first as a banking partner and then add more banks,” another source said.
NPCI will take about a month to review the bank’s technology and related infrastructure, the source said.
Paytm is the third largest UPI payment app in the country, processing 1.6 billion monthly transactions, according to data on the NPCI website. PhonePe and Google Pay are the two biggest.
Paytm users will migrate to the partner bank’s updated UPI handle, another person said.
“All business with Paytm is done only as per RBI regulations,” Yes Bank CEO Prashant Kumar said in an earlier interview on Monday.
“If the risks are clear and if the business makes commercial sense for us, we have the capabilities.”
