Paytm Payments Bank reports to have 100 million registered wallets

Paytm Payments Bank now has reached the 100 million registered wallet threshold in India.

“We will continue to invest further to strengthen the payments infrastructure in our country. We have not witnessed any decline in the number of users or any hindrance faced by users in the transactions done through the platform and have invested in creating a nationwide distribution network for completing KYC of customers,” stated Renu Satti, CEO of Paytm Payments Bank, in a statement to Indian media.

While the bank claims that know-your-customer (KYC) regulations from the Reserve Bank of India, which mandates identifying and verifying the identities of banking clients has not impacted account growth, analysts disagree.

“From the perspective of digital payment adoption, this is a significant milestone because the KYC mandate was leading customers to revert to cash,” Vivek Belgavi, a partner for financial technology at PwC, told the Economic Times.

A recent report from the Economic Times notes that there was dramatic fall in mobile wallet users because customer were reluctant to verify their identity for new account creation. Amazon India’s payment wallet, Amazon Pay, has also reportedly experienced a sharp concurrent reduction in customers loading their wallets.

The Reserve Bank of India announced last year that mobile wallet companies needed to collect full KYC authentication documents for customers and verify them physically to continue operating such accounts. In an effort to ensure customer verification, Paytm added 10,000 agents last year in an effort to obtain the new know-your-customer norms outlined by the central bank.

The Reserve Bank had stated that February 28, 2018 was the deadline for compliance, but has not yet announced whether banks had successfully implemented the new regulatory regime successfully since the deadline date. The central bank introduced KYC regulations to limit money laundering and other illegal and fraudulent activities.

Article Topics

authentication  |  identity verification  |  India  |  KYC  |  Paytm