BHIM UPI App Is Now Updated With Exciting New Features: Real Time Money Transfer, Multiple Bank A/c & More!

Modi government initiative, the Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) app was launched on  December 30, 2016. 

They were not sure about its future but recently they have come up with the latest version BHIM 2.0 with added features and functionality.

How Did BHIM App Perform?

Recently National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) noted that out of the total UPI transactions, 13. 98 million transactions amounting to Rs 6,202.51 crore were conducted through BHIM app in January 2019.

With the launch of this app, the digital payments could reach the core of Indian population because it enables the instant fund transfer between two bank accounts on a mobile platform.

That too without mentioning any details of the beneficiary’s bank account.

Why A New Version?

Recently Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister for Law & Justice, Communications and Electronics & Information Technology,  has launched the next generation BHIM 2.0 with added functionalities, increased transaction limits, and additional language support.

To make this app more feature-rich and effective, a few new functionalities have been added to this new version as informed by NPCI.

Which majorly included an increased limit for high-value transactions, donation gateway, linking multiple bank accounts, offers from merchants, an option of applying in an initial public offering (IPO) and gifting money.

Also, the latest version supports three additional languages – Konkani, Bhojpuri and Haryanvi,  on top of the existing 13 Indian languages.

What About The Competitions?

If we compare with other competitors in this segment, BHIM has been facing difficulty in holding its ground against the existing private entities, the other popular UPI platforms till now.

According to the data, it recorded 17.2 million transactions for September 2019, which merely accounted for a mere 1.8 percent of the total UPI transactions that month.

However, the government expects to change these statistics with the launch of the latest version  BHIM 2.0.

With this new launch, the  BHIM app users can now access and operate multiple bank accounts. 

The existing version of BHIM already enabled the payment service for utilities, which is now expanded to the merchant network to enable users to buy products and services from them and pay through the app.

It is made more easy as Users just have to link their mobile phone number with a bank account to carry out transactions on the BHIM app.

What Should We Expect From The Future?

As we know that India’s digital payments market has been seeing a steady growth. 

According to an estimation by Credit Suisse Group AG,  this domain will reach USD 1 trillion by 2023 from the current USD 200 billion. 

ACI Worldwide and YouGov also have done a  survey which shows that 42 percent of Indian consumers prefer digital payments while doing their festive shopping. (reference)

Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay and Amazon Pay are the other business rivals in the market to compete with the newly launch BHIM 2.0 app.