The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has released additional directives for the Paytm Payments Bank Limited (PPBL). It has asked the National Payment Council of India (NPCI) to review the request made by One97 Communications (OCL) which owns Paytm and PPBL. If approved, Paytm will become a third-party application provider (TPAP) enabling it to facilitate a unified payments interface (UPI) across its Paytm app.
As of now, Paytm routes its UPI payments via PPBL, an associate company with OCL, which is registered with RBI as a TPAP. As PPBL will cease to be functional post-March 15th (the initial deadline was February 29th), Paytm will not have any TPAP registration to provide the ecosystem for UPI payments.
Once Paytm gets TPAP registration, it will be able to facilitate UPI-based payment transactions including merchant apps, and mobile wallets, among other apps that use UPI for payments. TPAPs use NPCI’s UPI infrastructure and work with payment services providers (PSPs) and banks to carry out transactions. These TPAPs will be responsible for complying with guidelines and security standards set forth by NPCI.
According to the directives by RBI, NPCI will assess Paytm’s TPAP request and if approved, this will allow @paytm UPI handles to migrate to partnered banks to facilitate UPI transactions. Paytm won’t be able to add any new users on the platform until it finishes migrating the existing ones. NPCI is tasked with certifying 4 to 5 banks that will act as PSP banks to handle high-volume UPI transactions. Apart from that, OCL will open settlement accounts with partnered PSP banks for all the merchants using Paytm and Paytm QR codes for payments.
With the current state in mind, no deposits and credits on PPBL will be facilitated after March 15th. Thus, users are required to arrange for alternatives before the due date to avoid inconvenience. You can check out the 14-point FAQs put forth by RBI.
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