Indian Mobile Payments Titan Paytm’s Bank Claims 100 Million e-Verified Accounts

One of the biggest problems facing the mobile payments market in India, we found not so long ago, was the issue of Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations, a system that required certain legal documents to be part of the mobile payments signup process. A new report suggests that the Paytm Payments Bank won’t have much of a problem with that concept, as it’s got over 100 million verified accounts to its credit.

The problem started up last year, when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said that companies needed to not only collect identification documents from those opening accounts, but also verify those documents physically to keep operating within India. That prompted many customers to depart mobile payments and ultimately return to a cash basis, even though most of India’s cash had been declared demonetized in a now-infamous measure that took place over a year ago.

Despite this, however, Paytm Payments Bank has emerged as a major player in the field now because it managed to not only hold its customer base, but also grow it, even in the face of new demands from the RBI. Even major names like Amazon India saw customer counts decline as customers didn’t really want to put all that documentation into play; indeed, many Amazon India customers migrated to cash on delivery payments, according to reports from Amazon.

It wasn’t so far out of line to suggest that the RBI’s latest meddling might well have killed the mobile payments industry in its tracks; about 60 million people in India, by some reports, are at least semi-nomadic, and requiring identity paperwork from them would have been almost anathema to their lifestyle. Seeing what Paytm Payments Bank has done here, however, suggests that the impact may be limited, or at least limited to some banks in particular. Though admittedly, 100 million accounts isn’t so great in India, which has just over 1.3 billion people at last report, it’s still more than enough to base a market on.

Paytm might well have come out on top on this one, thanks to a customer base that doesn’t mind sharing information. Only time will tell what happens to the rest of the market, but Paytm Payments Bank should come out whole on the other side.