您现在的位置是：百科 >>正文

【】

百科116人已围观

简介What happens when the country's biggest bank, state-owned, and its largest mobile wallet firm, priva ...

What happens when the country's biggest bank, state-owned, and its largest mobile wallet firm, privately-owned and backed by Chinese investors, cannot co-exist?

India knows the answer.

SEE ALSO:Indians sign up for mobile wallets after most cash rendered useless

Over the last one week, customers using the State Bank of India's (SBI) internet banking system have been disallowed from transferring money to their Paytm wallets.

Instead, SBI has been recommending them to use its own e-wallet — State Bank Buddy. At the time of writing this, the app had notched up 5 million downloads on Google Play Store.

Credit: GOOGLE PLAY STORE

Surprisingly, there was no public announcement of this decision. It was revealed matter-of-factly when a Twitter user complained of not being able to refill his Paytm wallet via an SBI account.

The bank's official handle responded thus.

Mashable Top StoriesStay connected with the hottest stories of the day and the latest entertainment news.Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletterBy signing up you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.Thanks for signing up!

Tweet may have been deleted

And some other users confirmed.

Tweet may have been deleted

This comes at a time when the mobile wallet landscape in India has heated up following the central government's ban on high-value currency notes that sucked out more than three-fourths of the cash in circulation almost overnight.

As a result, adoption of services like Paytm (backed by Chinese investor Alibaba), Mobikwik, Freecharge and others has grown by leaps and bounds.

SBI, the old incumbent of Indian banking, is feeling the heat from Paytm, especially because it has the millions of points-of-sale (PoS) in the country and is also on its way to becoming a payments bank.

Tweet may have been deleted

Also, SBI sees demonetization as an opportunity to push its own app, which some users have complained is not up to the mark.

Tweet may have been deleted

Indians have already started criticizing this move by the country's largest lender and are apprehensive that this could set a precedent for other banks as well.