Yes Bank Crisis: PhonePe traffic bounces back after service outage

Digital payments platform PhonePe on Sunday said its transactions and user traffic have bounced back to normal, after being affected for 24 hours due to restrictions on Yes Bank.

Over 25 million customers used the PhonePe app on Saturday showing their trust in the platform, according to a statement by the company.

Track latest updates on the Yes Bank crisis here

The digital payments platform has bounced back hard in the past 24 hours. The platform processed over Rs 4,000 crore worth of transactions in 24 hours and saw its largest-ever volume of user traffic in a single day (with over 70 million app sessions), it said.

PhonePe saw a service outage for nearly 24 hours, which started immediately after the RBI placed Yes Bank on moratorium on March 5.

The PhonePe team worked overnight with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and new UPI partner ICICI bank to ensure all its services are up within a day, the company said.

Also Read: Here's how Yes Bank founder Rana Kapoor reacted as he faces his worst nightmare

All merchant payment settlements were restored by Friday noon and all consumer wallet, credit and debit card payments were restored by 3 pm.

All UPI services were restored by Friday night, with PhonePe users continuing to use their UPI @ybl handles. This ensured that there was a seamless transition for all of its 20 crore customers, it added.

Also Read: PMC Bank, Yes Bank scams linked to Wadhawan family

Sameer Nigam, founder and CEO of PhonePe, said, "Friday was an extraordinarily difficult situation with little precedence. We are grateful to RBI, NPCI, Yes Bank and ICICI for working collectively to ensure that millions of our customers and merchants were not inconvenienced a minute longer than necessary."

The outage on the PhonePe platform also led to playful banter between the company and its bigger rival Paytm.

"Inviting you to @PaytmBank #UPI platform. It already has huge adoption and can seamlessly scale manifold to handle your business. Let’s get you back up, fast!," Paytm Payments Bank tweeted on Friday.

However, PhonePe shot back to saying Paytm Payments Bank platform is not seamlessly scalable otherwise the company would have themselves approached it.

"Dear @PaytmBank Inviting you to consider that if your #UPI platform was so 'seamlessly scalable', we'd have called you ourselves. No point getting back up faster, if we have to desert our long term partners when they're down. Form is temporary, class is permanent," PhonePe reverted through a tweet.