RBI Strikes Paytm Payments Bank Off the Scheduled Banks List

The Reserve Bank of India announced on October 7, 2026 that Paytm Payments Bank has been excluded from the Second Schedule of the RBI Act — the formal removal of its scheduled-bank status. The notice closes the regulatory book on one of Indian fintech's longest and most consequential enforcement sagas.

The removal follows the cancellation of its banking licence in April 2026 over persistent non-compliance issues, and winding-up orders from the Delhi High Court on July 8 and July 22, 2026, which appointed a former SBI chief general manager as Official Liquidator.

It caps a roughly four-and-a-half-year enforcement arc: the RBI barred the bank from onboarding new customers in March 2022, imposed severe deposit restrictions in January 2024, and ultimately concluded that the bank's affairs were being conducted in a manner detrimental to the interests of its depositors.

For founders, the signal could not be clearer. Scheduled-bank status is a privilege the RBI giveth and taketh away — and India's largest fintech names get no leniency on governance, related-party conduct, or data compliance. The regulator that once welcomed wallet-led financial inclusion now writes the playbook on killing a licence, in full public view.

The Paytm group's surviving businesses — the parent company's payments and lending distribution — continue to operate under separate approvals, but the payments bank's removal from the schedule is the definitive full stop on the entity.