An utter chaos prevailed at branches and ATMs of YES Bank across the country on Friday as depositors rushed in panic to withdraw their money.
After RBI placed curbs on withdrawals from the Bank and sacked its board, the customers of the bank rushed to automated teller machines (ATMs) and branches. As the queues at the Bank’s branches and ATMs bulged through the day, the bank ran short of cash and ATMs stopped dispensing cash -- leaving the customers in further misery.
According to the banking industry sources, the central bank has asked the YES Bank to stop dispensing cash from its ATMs and directed it to disburse the cash only through the branches of the Bank.
After the RBI’s direction, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) took the bank’s ATMs offline, and customers weren’t able to withdraw money from the Bank. The bank’s ATMs are manufactured by NCR Corporation but maintained by various agencies.
The customers of the bank, who visited the branches of the bank, also were left in the lurch, due to the heavy rush of the depositors who were in hurry to withdraw their monies from the bank. The bank’s customers also were not able to conduct online transactions with the bank.
“Unfortunately my salary account is with Yes Bank and I’m unable to do online transactions since last evening till this morning. The server is down. I am worried that I’m not going to get my money immediately,” Communication Professional Annet Pillai told DH.
“We assure the depositors that their money is safe and there is absolutely no reason to panic. Look forward to continued support from the depositors,” Prashant Kumar, the RBI appointed Administrator of YES Bank said.
Separately, in a mail to the depositors of the Bank, Kumar sought their support.
Shares tank
As the trading on the exchanges opened, the YES Bank stocks were hammered by the investors. In the intra-day trade, the bank’s scrips tanked by 85% to paltry Rs 5.50 per share. Ironically, in the latter part of the day, the shares of the Bank pared the losses to close with 56.4% loss at Rs 16.20 per scrip -- with investors of the bank losing Rs 3,000 crore in a day.
Fintech platforms crash
Flipkart owned payment service, PhonePe was among the major services that suffered a major outage and went down after the RBI imposed a moratorium and took control of the troubled lender Yes Bank late on Thursday.
Companies that use Yes Bank for online payments also include food tech platform Swiggy, Microsoft’s Kaizala, travel firms MakeMyTrip and Cleartrip, according to data sourced from National Payments Corporation of India.
PhonePe has only one bank as its PSP. Google Pay has four PSPs, both Truecaller and MakeMyTrip have two PSPs each. All the other third-party app providers for UPI are dependent on a single acquirer bank to process their UPI payments, according to NPCI data.
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