The Delhi High Court has ordered the winding up of Paytm Payments Bank and appointed a former State Bank of India executive as the official liquidator, marking the final step in the closure of the payments bank following a prolonged regulatory crackdown.
“By an order dated July 8, 2026 read with the order dated July 22, 2026, the High Court of Delhi has ordered that Paytm Payments Bank be wound up under the provisions of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 read with the provisions of the Companies Act, 2013,” the RBI said in a statement Tuesday.
The regulator further said the high court has also appointed Girikumar M Nair, a former chief general manager at State Bank of India, as the official liquidator of the bank. Nair will oversee the liquidation process and exercise all the powers of the bank’s board with effect from July 8, it added.
Paytm Payments Bank, an associate firm of Vijay Shekhar Sharma-promoted Paytm, owned by digital payments firm One 97 Communications, came under increasing regulatory scrutiny in March 2022 after the RBI ordered the bank to stop onboarding new customers, citing supervisory concerns. In January 2024, the RBI barred the bank from accepting fresh deposits due to persistent non-compliance issues and a month later it asked the bank to be wound up by March that year.
Then in in April 2026, RBI cancelled the banking licence of Paytm Payments Bank for non-compliance with the norms, saying the bank’s “affairs are conducted in a manner detrimental to its depositors’ interests,” and subsequently approached the court seeking winding-up proceedings and the appointment of a liquidator.
Paytm Payments Bank was once the country’s largest payments bank and a key part of the digital payments ecosystem after receiving a licence in 2015. A payments bank can accept deposits but not extend loans.
RBI had earlier specified in its statement that “bank has enough liquidity to repay its entire deposit liability upon winding up.”
Following the RBI action in April, One97 Communications had said it had no exposure to Paytm Payments Bank as it had already impaired its investment by March 2024.