In a shocking decision last week, the Reserve Bank of India had ordered Paytm Payments Bank not to accept fresh deposits or top-ups in any customer account, wallets or FASTags after February 29, citing non-compliance and regulatory concerns. Since then, the company has been working to allay users’ concerns, with CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma also coming forward to confirm that the Paytm app will continue to work beyond February 29.

A recent report by Moneycontrol has now revealed that since the RBI order, there has been a significant increase in the number of downloads from the Google Play store for a number of Paytm’s competitors such as PhonePe, Google Pay and NPCI’s BHIM app.

The report, citing data from app intelligence firm Appfigures, noted that PhonePe saw a 45% week-on-week increase in app downloads with 2.79 lakh app downloads on February 3 compared to 1.92 lakh downloads on January 29. Meanwhile, in the four-day period following the RBI order, PhonePe saw a 24.1% increase in app downloads from 8.4 lakh downloads between January 24-27 to 10.4 lakh downloads between January 31 and February 3.

Another Paytm competitor, National Payments Corporation of India’s (NPCI) BHIM app also recorded a significant 21.5 % week-on-week increase in app downloads from 1.11 lakh downloads on January 27 to 1.35 lakh downloads on February 3. Moreover, during the four-day period from January 31 – February 3, the BHIM app witnessed a 50 per cent increase in app downloads from 3.97 lakh in the previous week to 5.93 lakh in the week ending February 3.

Meanwhile, Google Pay saw a modest week-on-week increase in the number of Android app downloads from 1.04 lakh on January 27 to 1.09 lakh on February 3. In the four days following the RBI decision, Google Pay saw an 8.4% increase in Android app downloads from 3.64 lakh in the previous week to 3.95 lakh downloads between January 31 – February 3.

Not only have downloads of Paytm’s rivals reportedly increased significantly, the Moneycontrol report notes that Android downloads of the Paytm app downloads also saw a 24 per cent week-on-week decline from 90,039 downloads on January 27 to 68,391 downloads on February 3. The company has also seen its ranking in the Google Play store drop from 18th to 40th in the free apps category.

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