NEW DELHI: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday directed Bank of Baroda (BoB) to immediately halt the process of onboarding new customers to its mobile application ‘bob World’.
The banking regulator has cited deficiencies in the onboarding process for the action.
This action is based on certain material supervisory concerns observed in the manner of onboarding of their customers onto this mobile application, the RBI said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Any further onboarding of customers of the bank on the ‘bob World’ application will be subject to rectification of the deficiencies observed and strengthening of the related processes by the bank to the satisfaction of RBI,” the central bank added.
The RBI further directed BoB to ensure that already onboarded ‘bob World’ customers do not face any disruption on account of this suspension.
The central bank's action came after media reported in July this year that Bank of Baroda was using unauthenticated, stranger’s or non-customer mobile numbers to boost app registrations.
The media reports also said one mobile number was linked to multiple accounts in order to artificially boost the number of registrations for the app.
However, the public sector bank had refuted those reports of its engagement in account tampering to inflate registrations.
“The Bank targets only active users who can get onboarded only through the system controls in place, rather than mobile app downloads or registrations,” BoB had said in a statement released earlier.
Reacting to the RBI decision, the state-owned bank informed exchanges that it has already taken corrective measures and will undertake further steps to address any remaining gaps and satisfy the central bank’s concerns.
Existing customers of the ‘bob World’ app will not experience any disruptions, it assured.
BoB said that the order does not affect other digital banking channels offered by the bank.