ICICI Bank has blocked transactions on PhonePe, Flipkart’s digital payments app. The bank said Flipkart is indulging in restrictive practices and breaking the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) guidelines of interoperability. The bank said in a statement that PhonePe is following restrictive practices allowing users to make payments with only its UPI handle, which is in contravention to the UPI guidelines of interoperability and choice that empowers a customer to choose any app to make payments through UPI. This is the second instance of banks blocking services to digital payments companies. Earlier, State Bank of India stopped allowing users from topping up their Paytm wallets using the internet banking feature. The bank said the step was on account of security concerns.
