ICICI Bank has blocked transactions on Flipkart’s payment app PhonePe citing security concerns. Launched in August, PhonePe is unified payments interface (UPI) app. The bank began blocking transactions on Phone Pe starting Friday.
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PhonePe founder and CEO, Sameer Nigam took Twitter to talk about ICICI blocking PhonePe transactions. He added that PhonePe had not received an official communication from ICICI Bank on the reasons for the move. PhonePe uses Yes Bank to authorize UPI transactions.
ICICI Bank said in a statement to Mint,
Some banks including us have raised security related concerns at appropriate forums about the access to UPI data to a non-banking application. This entity (PhonePe) is following restrictive practices allowing users to make payments with only its UPI handle, which is in contravention to the UPI guidelines of interoperability and choice that empowers a customer to choose any app to make payments through UPI. Pending resolution of these concerns, we have temporarily declined to undertake UPI transactions originating from this entity.
It must be noted that this restriction is only limited to PhonePe and other UPI apps such as BHIM are working fine. Earlier this month, State Bank of India (SBI) blocked net banking transactions with Paytm. The move comes from banks as they are striving to make people use their wallets instead of these third party apps.