ICICI Bank Launches ‘Mera iMobile’ App For Rural Customers Offering 135 Services; Becomes 1st App To Offer UPI Interface In 11 Languages

ICICI Bank has decided to jump into the agriculture sector with a new enthusiasm and outlook. They have just launched a new app, called ‘Mera iMobile’, targeted at rural customers, which is offering 135 agri-services, across 11 Indian languages.

Powered with UPI interface, this app has also become 1st UPI banking app to offer services in 11 Indian languages in a single go.

Often sidetracked by techies and planners, the agriculture sector in India is in need of a major transformation, and only technology can provide that push.

And it seems that ICICI Bank’s new rural push via their new app can be the trigger which agriculture sector needs right now.

Ms. Chanda Kochhar, MD & CEO, ICICI Bank said, “Today, India has the second largest – internet user base and smartphone market globally. We envisage that the next wave of growth in internet usage will come from rural India due to growth in cheaper smartphone handsets, the spread of wireless networks and evolving consumer behaviour.’

Key features Of ICICI Bank’s New Rural App:

• The app will provide farmers-centric 135 major services, which includes Kisan Credit Card, Gold Loan, Farm Equipment Loan and loans to Self-Help Groups (SHGs) and more.
• The app has been hailed as the 1st such platform to provide crop-wise mandi price of over 230 crop varieties across 460 mandis in India; besides providing taluka wise weather report of more than 3700 talukas across 300 cities.
• The app is available in 11 Indian languages, which are: Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Odia, Assamese and Punjabi
• The app is powered by UPI interface for making payments to loan instalments, which are linked to the customer’s savings accounts.
• Thereby, it becomes 1st Indian app to provide UPI interface across 11 Indian languages
• Without using mobile internet, 14 basic banking activities can be done using this app. For example, fund transfer, bill payment, cheque book request, recharges and balance enquiry etc
• Even non-ICICI Bank customers can use this app for getting weather information, data about crop price and more.

Interestingly, understanding the fact that penetration of Internet is limited in rural areas, there are some basic banking functions which can be done without using mobile Internet as well.

Besides, ICICI Bank has announced to establish WiFi enabled posters, which would be implemented across rural villages, panchayats, haats and markets. Anyone can download this app using these WiFi enabled posters, which will provide basic Internet connectivity.

The app can be downloaded here; and here is a list of FAQs related to the usage of this app.