State Bank of India, which is India’s largest bank having a customer base of 200 million and 5.2 million mobile banking customers, has finally launched their own UPI (Unified Payment Interface) based app: SBI Pay.
SBI has thus became 18th bank from India to have their own UPI app for payments and shopping; whereas there are 30 banks which are accepting UPI based payments.
After PM Modi announced currency ban two weeks earlier, analysts were expecting SBI’s UPI app to be launched as soon as possible. Considering that cashless push is a major objective for demonetization, SBI should have launched their app earlier. One-fourth of all bank customers from India are on SBI’s platform right now.
HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and 15 other banks have already launched their own UPI based apps.
Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairman of SBI said, “With the current demonetisation drive of the government and the push towards digital or cashless payments, SBI Pay is expected to be a game changer in the digital payment ecosystem as the bank has the largest customer base in the country,”
Interestingly, NPCI (National Payments Council of India) hasn’t yet come out with specifications regarding UPI platform for iOS, because of which, SBI hasn’t yet launched iOS version of the app. Only Android version is available as of now.
Here is a list of all banks which have launched their UPI based apps:
- Karnataka Bank
- Federal Bank
- South Indian Bank
- Punjab National Bank
- Union Bank
- DCB Bank
- Canara Bank
- Bank of Maharashtra
- Catholic Syrian Bank
- ICICI Bank
- United Bank
- OBC
- UCO Bank
- HDFC Bank
- Vijaya Bank
- Andhra Bank
- Axis Bank
The Good Points
As UPI is platform independent, even non-SBI users can download SBI Pay, and start using it to send or receive money from other UPI users. Besides, no additional identifiers are required to send or receive payments: only a virtual payment address is required to operate it (which is attached with your phone number and bank account)
There are only 10,000 UPI transactions happening per day in India. Entry of SBI Pay is expected to increase this number.
The Bad Points
The version which went live doesn’t support payments for merchants and increased transaction limits, which is surprising to say the least. Only peer-to-peer transfers are right now available using this app.
Besides, several users complained to bugs and unfriendly UI of the app. For instance, in case SIM 1 is not active on your smartphone, then the app cannot be activated because SBI Pay uses only SIM 1 to send the verification text, and if the text is not send, then the whole process ends.
Some users were not able to locate change SIM 1 to SIM 2 for sending verification text. (later, users confirmed that this bug was fixed, and now they can choose the SIM to be used for sending verification messages). At the time of writing, the app has received 3.2 stars out of 356 reviews.
Being semi-wallet, this app cannot be used to store money like in a full wallet like Paytm or Freecharge. Instead, the money is directly debited from the attached bank account.
You can download the app right here.
Do let us know your experience of using SBI Pay.