Bringing big relief to the digital payments platform, the central bank of India extended its earlier deadline of February 28 for complying with full Know Your Customer (KYC) norms.The move will bring respite to all mobile wallets like Paytm, PhonePe and Ola Money.
As per the new guidelines by RBI, now the deadline is extended for the next 6 months and mobile wallet companies are asked to comply with the full KYC norms by the new deadline. The shift in deadline comes after intense lobbing by mobile wallet companies as 70% to 80% of their users have not done full KYC yet.
“Based on requests received from various stakeholders to increase the above timeline on account of difficulties in undertaking Aadhaar eKYC and time necessary to put in place alternative systems for completing the KYC process, it has been decided to allow PPI issuers additional time of six months for completion of the KYC process,” said the RBI.
Earlier, Supreme court had barred the Aadhaar based eKYC regarding the privacy concerns and barred the private player from doing Aadhaar based KYC. This made the compliance of norms tough.
While an e-KYC costs on average about ₹15 per person, the physical recourse takes ₹80-100 which is also the primary reason behind such low compliance. Full KYC requires submission of various papers including Aadhaar. The new deadline will surely give relief to mobile wallet operators like Paytm, Ola money and PhonePe.