Last week, there had been much outrage over national bank SBI not letting users add money into their Paytm wallets. When customers had complained, they’d been told by SBI’s social media team to instead use Buddy, SBI’s own wallet. This was a dependency that had the potential to hurt Paytm – SBI is the biggest bank in India, its users being unable to load money from it into their Paytm wallets would’ve made the app much less useful.
But in one fell swoop, Paytm has removed all such dependencies on banks by adding support for UPI. Users will now be able to load money into their Paytm accounts with their UPI id. This means that an SBI user can use the UPI interface, which SBI supports, to transfer money to his Paytm wallet.
“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,” said Paytm senior vice president Nitin Misra.
The UPI, or the United Payments Interface, is a framework for online financial transactions. Developed by the National Payments Corporation of India, it currently supports 27 banks. Several companies, such as PhonePe, and SBI Pay, also use the interface for transactions. With Paytm accounts having their unique UPI ids, users will be able to transfer money from their banks into their Paytm accounts.
Paytm has shown remarkable growth in the period following the government’s shock demonetization move last year. Its offline transactions, such as at small stores or toll booths, have increased 12 times since the move was introduced. This has made competitors uneasy, and SBI had even put up a poster outside a branch where it had compared it unfavourably to its own wallet.