When a Paytm user almost became prey to phishing scam

Gone are the days when phishing scams used to take place through email. With the advent of technology and upgradation in the payment system, the phishing scams have now reached the doors of people.

One such incident happened to a payment behemoth Paytm user, who had a man showed as Paytm KYC representative at his house and almost became prey to the phishing scam.

“I was at my house, when the door bell rang. My grandma opened the door to find a guy, supposedly from Paytm, asking if someone wants complete their KYC,” said Shobhit Bakliwal, a Paytm user from Jaipur in a series of tweets.

New @Paytm phishing scam alert:

I was at my house, when the door bell rang. My grandma opened the door to find a guy, supposedly from Paytm, asking if someone wants complete their KYC.

— Shobhit (@shobhitic) April 18, 2018

He then proceeded to look at them, write somethings down, and then launched an app on his phone, which kinda sorta looked like Paytm. He told us to login to the app to verify our numbers. This is where I felt it was "phishy".

— Shobhit (@shobhitic) April 18, 2018

He further explained about the representative, who according to him wore Paytm ID card on top of his shirt. Soon after initial introduction and document verification, the KYC representative then asked Bakliwal and his grandmother to enter their usernames and passwords in an app on his phone. Then, he entered his number in his phone and waited for an OTP, which did not show up.

This is where he sensed fishiness. “I said I don’t remember the password, so let me use forget password from your app, and he got a bit scared,” he told the KYC representative asking his grandmother to take back all the documents.

“I asked him his name, and that spooked him. He dashed out of our house. I couldn’t go behind him as me and my grandma were alone in the house at the time,” said Shobhit in another tweet. And the representative left and so is a scam.

Paytm when intimated about the incident said in a reply over Twitter that "the company always send the SMS to our customer's whenever the home visit is fixed for KYC verification. Also, KYC agent always carries the ID card. Though we always urge our customers to be vigilant & beware of the fraudsters."

Paytm has been sending its representatives to houses where users request for their KYC to be completed.

Earlier, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had set a deadline for digital wallet companies to fulfil KYC norms for all their users.

Paytm, in accordance with its future plan, has been planning to hire 10,000 people and open one lakh branches across the country to make it easy for its customers to complete their Know Your Customer (KYC) norms.

Talking about KYC, Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma plans to invest around $500 million on KYC system of the wallet current and savings accounts over the next two years.

Sharma, however, did not respond to the incident, that could have almost been first phishing scam for the company through impersonation.