Are you worried that the money in your prepaid wallets like Paytm and PhonePe will become unusable? Well, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has good news for you.
On 30 August, RBI extended the deadline for mobile wallets to become fully Know Your Customer (KYC) compliant. This means people using PhonePe, Paytm, Amazon Pay or other such wallets will have no trouble doing their transactions as usual at least till 29 February, 2020.
The deadline for mobile wallets to become fully KYC compliant was earlier set to end on 31 August. But RBI, as mentioned in this notice, has extended the deadline by six more months. It has given an ultimatum that no further extension would be granted after this.
It is advised that the timeline for conversion of minimum detail PPIs (prepaid payment instruments) to KYC compliant PPIs has been extended from 18 months to 24 months. It may also be noted that no further extension will be granted for this purpose.RBI notification to PPIs
KYC compliance of users was becoming a big pain point for companies like Paytm and PhonePe (owned by Flipkart) earlier this year, as they had to employ additional staff and setup centers to get people physically verified with their details.
For now, users have been given the chance to get partial KYC done through their smartphone without any discomfort.
And the Payments Council of India (PCI), the industry body, quoted in IANS story, is hopeful that the government will come up with a similar e-KYC method that wouldn’t require face-to-face verification.
According to the latest RBI annual report, usage of mobile wallets by consumers has come down, with the locally designed Unified Payments Interface (UPI) gaining a strong userbase through apps like Google Pay, Paytm and PhonePe among others.
With the trend of QR-based payment sans KYC coming to the fore, it’s worth keeping an eye if wallet players are going to ask for further extension of the deadline.
(With IANS inputs)
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