Paytm Payments Bank offers help to PhonePe after UPI outage, PhonePe rejects it

New Delhi: Paytm Payments Bank took a dig on its rival PhonePe in the wake of obstructions it faced due to using cash-strapped Yes Bank platform for transactions.

PhonePe founder and CEO Sameer Nigam said there has been an outage of service on its payment application due to restrictions on its banking partner Yes Bank and the service will be live soon.

"Inviting you to @PaytmBank #UPI platform. It already has huge adoption and can seamlessly scale manifold to handle your business. Let’s get you back up, fast!," Paytm Payments Bank tweeted.

PhonePe shot back to say that Paytm Payments Bank platform is not seamlessly scalable otherwise the company would have themselves approached it.

"Dear @PaytmBank Inviting you to consider that if your #UPI platform was so 'seamlessly scalable', we'd have called you ourselves. No point getting back up faster, if we have to desert our long term partners when they're down. Form is temporary, class is permanent," PhonePe's official twitter handle said.

PhonePe, one of the country's largest digital payment platforms, is dependent upon Yes Bank to process its transactions.

"We sincerely regret the long outage. Our partner bank (Yes Bank) was placed under moratorium by RBI. Entire team's been working all night to get services back up asap (as soon as possible)," Nigam tweeted on Friday morning.

He added that the app hopes to be live in "a few hours".

Yes Bank was placed under a moratorium on Thursday evening, with the RBI capping deposit withdrawals at ₹50,000 per account for a month and superseding its board.

The bank will not be able to grant or renew any loan or advance, make any investment, incur any liability or agree to disburse any payment.

For the next month, Yes Bank will be led by the RBI-appointed administrator Prashant Kumar, a former chief financial officer of SBI.

According to the National Payments Corporation of India, several apps such as Flipkart, MakeMyTrip, Myntra, Jabong, Cleartrip, Airtel, Swiggy, Redbus, Hungerbox, MudraPay, Udaan, Microsoft Kaizala and PVR use Yes Bank's UPI platform.

Digital payment gateway firm Instamojo said it has temporarily withheld payouts to merchants having Yes Bank accounts.

"We will be temporarily withholding payouts to merchants having Yes bank accounts until further clarity on the situation. This is to ensure that no merchant's funds get blocked. As an alternate, we have provided our merchants the option to change their registered bank from Yes bank to another account," Instamojo Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Sampad Swain said.

A Bharti Airtel official said there is no impact on the company's transaction as it uses many other payment gateways.

E-commerce firm Myntra said, "Transactions on Myntra have not been impacted, except for payments through PhonePe. Our customers can continue to transact on Myntra using other UPI payment service provider apps in addition to credit and debit cards and net banking until services of PhonePe are restored."

Start-up firm Kredx said that following the government's decision to impose a moratorium on Yes Bank on Thursday, the company has stopped all inward and outward transactions with the bank's with immediate effect.