PhonePe not working? Payments service app hit post banking partner Yes Bank's moratorium

PhonePe, a popular digital payment service in India, suffered an outage on Friday after its banking partner Yes Bank was put under moratorium by the Reserve Bank of India on Thursday evening. PhonePe users were unable to pay using the platform. The firm’s founder and CEO Sameer Nigam tweeted that the service went through a long outage and that the team is working to solve the issue.

'Thanks for your patience'

He added that Yes Bank, which is PhonePe’s partner bank, was placed under moratorium by RBI, which led to the outage.

The platform acknowledged the outage and said that the services were temporarily unavailable but did not say that it was due to the restrictions on its banking partner. 

Companies such as Airtel Payments Bank and CRED have also provided clarifications on social media to detail whether the update would put any impact on their operations. Swiggy, which also has Yes Bank as the bank for supporting UPI payments, has removed the option to order food using a UPI account. Similarly, Flipkart has also removed the option to make payments using PhonePe. 

On Thursday evening, RBI placed restrictions on cash withdrawal for Yes Bank customers. The apex bank capped withdrawals for depositors at Rs 50,000. RBI superseded the Yes Bank board and appointed Prashant Kumar as the administrator of the bank. The RBI stated that it is satisfied that it must issue certain directions to Yes Bank to protect the interest of the depositors.

READ | CEA K Subramanian backs RBI's moratorium on Yes Bank; cites 'standard procedure globally'

READ | NSE restricts Yes Bank shares, announces no Futures & Options contracts from May 29

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday said that Reserve Bank of India is working towards for early resolution of Yes Bank issue. "RBI governor has assured that there will be no loss to any Yes Bank depositor," the Finance Minister said, adding that the steps taken to take control of Yes Bank are in the interest of depositors, bank and the economy.

READ | BIG: SBI boss Rajnish Kumar confirms in-principle approval for Yes Bank bailout investment

READ | 'Personally monitoring Yes Bank situation, depositors' money safe': FM Sitharaman

(With agency inputs)