Indian e-payments company Paytm had claimed about its grand entry into UPI which was launched last month. This was what Vijay Shekhar, founder of Paytm tweeted:
~25% of total UPI tx from Paytm ecosystem!
Our launch month contribution to @NPCI_BHIM @UPI_NPCI #???????? https://t.co/ROyPfG74YX— Vijay Shekhar (@vijayshekhar) January 1, 2018
But, its rival PhonePe is revealing the other aspect of the situation.
“I love @UPI_NPCI. But the 145 million transaction count is badly polluted. 6.3 million UPI P2P transfers between Paytm VPAs to Yes Bank VPAs. Sounds impressive. But 5.6 million (90%!!!) transfers were for Rs 1 each. And only 60,000 distinct Paytm users did the transfers. That’s 105 transactions of Rs 1 per user!,”
Sameer Nigam, the CEO of Phonepe wrote on micro-blogging site Twitter on Wednesday. Sameer later deleted this tweet but his intentions were very clear that Paytm had artificially inflated UPI transactions with Rs 1 per user mainly.
Though Paytm didn’t respond to Nigam’s tweet, a Paytm spokesperson said in an interview: “In order to continue to build what Paytm has built and in support of the digitisation agenda that our Prime Minister has, we have already said that we will spend $1.6 billion over the next three years. Some of that money will go towards educating customers to do transactions using our platform and anytime a new kind of product is introduced to a customer they need time to adapt to those platforms.”
UPI is achieving great heights very quickly but it has been involved in many controversies also. Experts are talking UPI as a positive step because a total around Rs 13,144 crore was transferred through UPI in December 2017 only. Even if some transactions are of low value, it is not a big problem, they say.
Google Tez and Paytm are even planning to deal with more merchants that will accept UPI payments through QR codes or by pull transactions from merchants.
