
“Paytm Payments Bank is proud to be a completely homegrown bank, fully compliant with RBI’s directions on data localisation. All of the Bank’s data resides within India,” it said.
Paytm, founder and chief executive officer, Vijay Shekhar Sharma told Moneycontrol in an exclusive interview that the Bloomberg report was “malicious”.
“I want to call out that it is an absolutely malicious story which does not corroborate the facts of the business that we are in. I want to say this clearly – this is stemming from malicious intent. Not just that, it is absolute rubbish,” Sharma said.
However, the steep decline in the stock price today suggests that investors remain far from convinced.
What’s the Matter
On Friday, RBI banned Paytm Payments Bank from onboarding new customers to its platform on an immediate basis. A Bloomberg report on Monday posted that the ban was put in place as the company violated rules by sharing local data with Chinese servers and failing to verify its customers properly.
Before the market opened on Tuesday, Paytm reported a 105% YoY surge in gross merchandise value for Jan and Feb in Q4 FY22 at Rs 1,65,333 crore and stated that it achieved the highest-ever monthly loan disbursals in Feb.
However, investors seem to pay no heed to either Sharma’s claim on the Bloomberg report or the positive figures reported by the company.
The payments major’s market valuation has slashed over 72% from its issue price of Rs 2,150, wiping out Rs 1 lakh crore of its market cap. Now under Rs 40,000 crore, compared to an m-cap of Rs 1.39 lakh crore.