Yes Bank’s Monthly UPI Transactions Surge To 50 Lakh Post Paytm Partnership

Yes Bank’s monthly Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions have surged by more than half since the bank struck the deal with fintech major Paytm last month for migrating user accounts.

Speaking at the post results press conference on Saturday (April 27), Yes Bank managing director and CEO Prashant Kumar said that the bank’s monthly UPI transactions have surged by 17 Lakh to 50 Lakh since partnering with Paytm.

“Before the partnership with Paytm, we were seeing around 3.3 Mn (33 Lakh) UPI transactions and now we are seeing 5 Mn (50 Lakh) monthly transactions on UPI,” said Kumar as per Moneycontrol. 

It is pertinent to note that Paytm struck a deal with Yes Bank and Axis Bank for UPI payments on March 15, the same day the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) curb on Paytm Payments Bank kicked in. Prior to the restrictions, the payments bank powered Paytm’s UPI payments infrastructure. 

During the press meet, Kumar also said that Yes Bank accounted for more than half (55%) of the total merchant UPI transactions. 

“Our market share in merchant UPI transactions is around 55 percent. This gives us (an) advantage on fee income and we may look at cross selling products to them in future,” he reportedly added.

The story traces its origins back to January this year when the RBI imposed a slew of restrictions on Paytm Payments Bank and barred it from undertaking various banking services, including UPI facility and fund transfers.

The restrictions kicked in from March 15, which prompted the payments bank to look for alternate backend banks to power UPI transactions. Eventually, it partnered with the Axis Bank and Yes Bank to continue its services.

As a result, all new users registering for UPI on the Paytm app will now get new handles. While Yes Bank has already gone live with the handle @ptyes handle for a closed group of users, customers signing up with Axis Bank will get @ptaxis handle.

Not just this, Yes Bank has also been currently onboarded by the fintech to migrate existing 9 Cr @paytm handles.

The latest development comes days after Paytm CEO and founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said that the process of migration of merchant customers from Paytm to new payment system provider (PSP) bank handles has been completed.

The tumultuous past few months have seen Paytm stock declining by nearly half since the start of the payments bank trouble at the end of January. Shares of the fintech closed 0.57% lower at INR 376.90 on the BSE on Friday (April 26).