The finance ministry has notified Parliament that Paytm Payments Bank is yet to appoint a firm to conduct an audit of its information technology (IT) systems.
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"The RBI (Reserve Bank of India) has further informed that the Paytm Payments Bank Limited has not yet appointed the IT audit firm to conduct a comprehensive System Audit of the IT system of the bank," Minister of State for Finance, Bhagwat Karad told the Lok Sabha in a written reply to a question on April 4.
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On March 11, the RBI barred Paytm Payments Bank from onboarding new customers and ordered it to appoint a firm to conduct a "comprehensive System Audit of its IT system".
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"Onboarding of new customers by Paytm Payments Bank Ltd will be subject to specific permission to be granted by RBI after reviewing a report of the IT auditors," the central bank had said.
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The day after the RBI's order, Paytm Payments Bank had said it was taking immediate steps to comply with the directions, however, nearly a month later; it is yet to do so.
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While the RBI did not mention the reasons for the directions given to Paytm Payments Bank, it has been reported that the action followed a leak of data to Chinese entities. According to the report, the RBI had found in its annual inspections that Paytm Payments Bank's servers were sharing information with China-based entities that indirectly own a stake in the bank.
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However, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Paytm's Chief Executive Officer, had denied the claim, saying the report was "absolutely false" and "completely factually wrong".
