Paytm Payment Bank, Paytm’s first profitable feature, landed in trouble yet again. The latest issue faced by Paytm was a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed against the Vijay Shekhar Sharma owned company. The reason cited in the PIL was the lack of legal authorisation when it comes to the Company’s online postpaid wallet feature.
On the 27th of May, a Delhi High Court bench headed by Chief Justice Rajendra Menon questioned the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Paytm to about the PIL filed against the Company for overstepping its licence.
Filed through advocate Payal Bahl, the petition said, Paytm Payments Bank Limited was initially granted an online payments licence under Section 22 of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 by the RBI in January 2017. Shortly after, Paytm started abusing the licence and even though it wasn’t allowed to distribute loans or allow credits, it kept doing so either way.
“Paytm Payments Bank by the means of its unauthorised Paytm Postpaid has provided un-monitored and unauthorized access to the personal information such as Aadhaar, PAN, transactions etc. of the its customers to unauthorized third party, thereby clearly violating Article 21 of the Indian Constitution and other relevant banking acts,” the PIL claimed.
With this, the PIL said, Paytm’s postpaid wallet was illegal and was contradictory to the guidelines set under Section 22. The RBI was involved in the sanction because Paytm had not involved or informed the Bank about the operations of the postpaid wallet.
The Delhi High Court asked the Central Government and the RBI to file affidavits with their responses regarding the issue before the next hearing of the case on the 3rd of September.
Stay tuned for more updates.