Almost a year back, we all had witnessed the biggest economic reform of demonetization in India where in much of India's circulating high-denomination cash was invalidated in
November 2016 in order to reduce corruption, counterfeiting, and tax evasion.
The Digital India programme is a flagship programme of the Government of India with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. As a part of this programme, the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a new mobile banking app (BHIM) on
Dec 30, 2016, with an idea to “revolutionize” the country and to promote cashless transactions and converting India into less-cash society. The BHIM app is destined to replace all cash transactions. The app will revolutionize India and force people worldwide to take notice.
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) develops BHIM (Bharat Interface for money) app. It is a paid app, which lets you make simple, easy and quick transactions using Unified Payments Interface (UPI). You can make direct bank payments to anyone on UPI using their UPI ID or scan their QR with the BHIM app. You can also request money through the app from a UPI ID.
Any person who wishes to use BHIM app has to register his bank account with BHIM and set a UPI PIN for the bank account. Your mobile number is your payment address. However, the user can create a custom payment address, in addition to their phone number.
The features of BHIM app are:
- One can easily send money by entering UPI ID, account number, Aadhaar or by scanning a QR code.
- Request money from other UPI users by entering their UPI ID, make payments quicker by scanning the QR code of the person to whom the money is to be send.
- The UPI passbook can be downloaded and transaction history can be easily viewed.
- Switching between multiple bank accounts linked with the BHIM app becomes very easy.
- The BHIM app supports many Indian regional languages like Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi and many more languages in addition to English and Hindi. Thus this feature enables the rural Indian population also to contribute towards achieving digital India.
- Banks like Allahabad Bank, Andhra Bank, Axis Bank, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, IDBI Bank, IDFC Bank, Indian Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Punjab National Bank, RBL Bank, South Indian Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, State Bank of India, Syndicate Bank, Union Bank of India and the like supports BHIM on their system.
- One additional feature of BHIM app is that, there are no transaction charges levied. However, the bank may levy a nominal charge. The BHIM app eases bank-to- bank transfer and thus eliminates the need to transfer the money from the bank account to any e-wallet for any transaction.
- Having looked at the working system of BHIM app and understanding its features encourages every Indian to shift from traditional i.e. cash or paper money to paperless and digital money.