Payments banks are the new cool in the market some think they are revolutionary milestones. They may be to some but in this country they are proving to be insufficient time and again. I can’t specifically pin point the grass root cause but if I were to name someone I think that these organizations are taking advantage of the situation and are exploiting our rights at many levels.
Paytm payments bank was barred from opening up bank accounts by RBI because it couldn’t maintain its net worth close to the guidelines. This is a serious action from RBI from which paytm learnt nothing and continued what it does best- advertising and promising hefty cash backs.
But it cannot be said that they dint take any action at all they not only stopped their bank account openings they deactivated many wallets (remember when you were logged out of your account even when you didn’t) under the pretense of incomplete KYC which they themselves were not interested in completing.
You all must be wondering how does any of this affect you as an individual?? Well this is something I am good at explaining. So, here are a few pointers:
Paytm which earlier was a friendly wallet now under the false pretense of completing KYC is using your aadhar data without your consent to open up bank accounts.
Now you may think it’s not that big a problem a bank account won’t cause much harm. But let me tell you its bang on violation of your rights on many levels.
This shady stuff doesn’t ends at opening up a bank account. They further activate or inactivate any service of their choice. Such as issuing you a debit card or credit card and guess what you don’t have to apply or check boxes for it. They do all this by themselves or their zero trained shopkeepers who are doing what they are asked to do. Moreover you come to know about all this from a no- reply E- Mail.
There is tedious procedure to delete your payments bank account if you don’t need it but my question is why did I have one in the first place??
I didn’t need one, I didn’t apply for any and most importantly I don’t want to have one.
In this era of digitalization all these small acts of violations are growing by the hour and we don’t even realize how these things can be major setbacks for us.
In January 2018 we discovered that Rs 167 crore was deposited by gas companies as a gas subsidy to their 31.21 lakh customers. And all these 31.21 lakh customers had no idea what so ever about their money. The customer has the right to choose the bank account in which they want to get their subsidy but in this case the company didn’t offer them much of a choice. After thorough investigation the Airtel Payments Bank lost it license for six months and money was moved back to the accounts of people.
I completely understand that we need to reinvent our ways to be better, but we need to start it at grass root level. Even after so many guidelines we are facing such scandals. This is a straight indicator that we need to be more responsible in first place and these companies should share their detailed prospects of their agenda and most importantly respect the rights of their customers to choose whether they want an account with you or not.
Payments bank must understand that if a person has a wallet with you it doesn’t implies that they need a bank account with you.
Yes your idea is great but it needs a lot more work and reformed approaches than this to function properly.
chhavi27 