“This action is based on certain material supervisory concerns observed in the manner of onboarding of their customers onto this mobile application,” the Reserve Bank of India said in a statement.
In July, Al Jazeera had reported that Bank of Baroda official had linked bank accounts to unrelated mobile numbers to achieve stiff targets to get customers join the app.
The Al Jazeera had reported in July this year that a Bank of Baroda officer, in March 2022, from Bhopal zone was given a target of onboarding at least 150 existing bank customers for the bank’s new app, “bob World”. The app was launched six months prior to this. While the officials were finding it difficult to add customers to the banking app, their regional office kept a check on them and reprimanded for poor performance.
“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 said today.
However, the central bank has asked Bank of Baroda to ensure that existing customers on ‘bob World’ should not face any disruption on account of this suspension.According to the Al Jazeera report, an unnamed official revealed that he and his colleagues follow a procedure to link bank accounts not associated with mobile numbers. They connect these accounts to available mobile numbers, which may belong to bank employees, sanitation and security personnel, or their relatives. This process is used to generate the necessary one-time password (OTP) for app registration. Subsequently, they sign up these accounts from the backend. Afterward, the employees proceed to remove these customers from the app and repeat the same procedure with other bank accounts, using the same mobile number.
