PhonePe, Paytm, Cred Shut Down Rent Payment Feature After RBI Curbs
Some of India’s largest fintech companies, including PhonePe, Paytm, and Cred , have discontinued their popular rent payment feature after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) tightened rules governing payment aggregators (PAs). The decision marks a significant shift in how users can pay their monthly rent, particularly those relying on credit cards for such transactions. RBI’s New Regulations According to an RBI circular dated 15 September 2025 , a payment aggregator (PA) must ensure that a marketplace onboarded by it does not accept payments for sellers who are not directly onboarded onto the platform. In practice, this means fintech apps can no longer act as intermediaries for landlords without performing merchant KYC (Know Your Customer) checks. Since landlords were never formally onboarded as merchants on these apps, routing rent payments via credit cards has now been disallowed. Why Fintech Apps Stopped Rent Payments Industry sources explained that fintech firms were ess...