Amid YES Bank crisis, Paytm offers help to PhonePe after outage; check out funny banter

Paytm Payments Bank and PhonePe got into funny banter on Twitter following technical outage faced by the Flipkart-owned payments platform due to restrictions imposed on its banking partner, YES Bank. After YES Bank was put under restriction by the Reserve Bank of India, PhonePe suffered an outage and its users were unable to pay using the platform.

The services, meanwhile, have been restored now.

Taking on its rival, Paytm Payments Bank invited PhonePe to use its own UPI platform. "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!" Tweeted Paytm, in reply to a PhonePe tweet where it stated the app was undergoing unscheduled maintenance.

Dear @PhonePe_ ,

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 (@PaytmBank) March 6, 2020

We are temporarily unavailable.

We are going through an unscheduled maintenance activity. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

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We'll be back soon.

- PhonePe (@PhonePe_) March 5, 2020

PhonePe quipped saying had Paytm Payments Bank "seamlessly scalable", PhonePe would have approached the platform itself. PhonePe also said there was no point in deserting its partners when they were "down". In the same tweet, PhonePe handed a salvo to Paytm Payments Bank in the form of an age-old adage: 'Form is temporary, class is permanent'.

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 (@PhonePe_) March 6, 2020

PhonePe is a UPI-based payments system and digital wallet company based in Bengaluru. Founded in 2015, PhonePe was acquired by Flipkart in 2016 to build its payment business. It is dependent upon YES Bank to process its transactions.

On Friday morning, PhonePe founder and CEO Sameer Nigam had acknowledged the outage was due to the RBI restrictions on YES Bank. "Our partner bank (Yes Bank) was placed under moratorium by RBI. Entire team's been working all night to get services back up asap," it stated.

YES Bank was placed under a moratorium by the Reserve Bank of India on Thursday evening. Following this, the RBI superseded its board and curtained cash withdrawal limit to Rs 50,000 per account for a month. Due to the RBI superseding its board, the private lender won't be able to lend or renew loans or advances, make investments, incur liabilities or agree to disburse payments.

YES Bank will be under the reigns of the RBI-appointed Prashant Kumar, who is a former CFO of SBI for the next month.

Also watch: Who is to blame for the Yes Bank mess?

Also read: PhonePe services hit as partner Yes Bank collapses

Also read: Vijay Shekhar Sharma expects Paytm to turn profitable after two years