Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma personally announced the big news via blog post: Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has given its final approval for the launch of their much-awaited Payments Bank.
The news is indeed important, as Sharma shared on his Facebook profile:
In the official blog post, ‘Today, Everything changes, Again.’, he declared his intentions, as he wrote: “This is our chance to build something that every Indian can be proud of. No other role or responsibility means as much to me as the privilege of building Paytm Payments Bank, and I intend to take a full-time executive role in the Bank.”
As per some reports, Paytm’s Payments Bank would be launched in the next 30-60 days, mainly targeting few selected cities in UP.
Notably, Airtel’s Payments Bank, which was launched last year in November, focussed only on Rajasthan on a pilot basis.
Last month, Paytm founder had to write a blog post, explaining the ‘Chinese connection’ with their bank, and detailed how the bank is in control of Indians. 51% stake of the bank lies with Sharma, while 49% stake is with One97 Communication. However, with an investment of $680 million, control of 40% of One97 Communication is with Alibaba.
Paytm wallet will be soon integrated with Payments Bank (as per RBI regulations); and they have a target of creating accounts of 20 crore Indians within a year of launch.
Budget of Rs 400 crore has already been allocated for marketing the bank, and they will soon hire close to 3000 employees for its functioning.
UPI Is Now Integrated With Paytm Wallet
Meanwhile, following Freecharge’s footsteps, Paytm Wallet has now integrated UPI based cash loading mechanism into their wallet.
Nitin Misra, Senior Vice President, Paytm said, “We have implemented a deep integration between our payment system and UPI. This will not only help customers add money into their Paytm Wallets, but also act as a strong foundation for our upcoming Payments Bank. Going forward, we will continue to leverage various India Stack features to bring innovative and cost-effective services to our fellow Indians,”
While loading the wallet with cash, a new option called UPI would be visible. Users can simply load money using <ID>@UPI address into their Paytm wallet. Once this method is used, a confirmation message would be received by the UPI account holder to approve the transaction.
PayTM charges 3% for transferring money back to user’s account. This is too much. Grocery shops gets only 1% margin. How can they pay 3%?