Government is trying hard to promote all sorts of cashless payments through digital medium. Today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a new Aadhaar based mobile payment application called BHIM at the Digi Dhan Mela camp in New Delhi. BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) is developed by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and is available on Google Play Store. BHIM ia basically a new e-wallet app like UPI (Unified Payment Interface) or USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) that enables fast, secure, reliable cashless payments through your mobile phone.
This app is aimed to minimize the use of cash or plastic money while doing translations. This app comes with pretty basic, straightforward and easy to use interface. This app is 2MB in size and can be downloaded from play store. Once you open the app, you will be asked to choose the language between English and Hindi then few information will be displayed. After that it will ask permission to send an SMS and register your phone number. After the registration it will ask you to set a 4-digit passcode, and then choose your bank.
Here you get options to send money, request money or scan & pay using QR Code. You get an option to create your customized UPI address, which can be anything however by default, your UPI address is your registered mobile number. For example if your mobile number is 97381xxxxx, your default UPI address will be 97381xxxxx@upi which can be changed later. The transaction limit is maximum of Rs. 10,000 per transaction and Rs. 20,000 within 24 hours. The payment system works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days.
Currently Allahabad Bank, Andhra Bank, Axis Bank, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Bank of Maharashtra, Canara Bank, Catholic Syrian Bank, Central Bank of India, DCB Bank, Dena Bank, Federal Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, IDBI Bank, IDFC Bank, Indian Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, IndusInd Bank, Karnataka Bank, Karur Vysya Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Punjab National Bank, RBL Bank, South Indian Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, State Bank of India, Syndicate Bank, Union Bank of India, United Bank of India, Vijaya Bank are in the list of supported banks.
PM Narendra Modi said “only your thumb will be needed to make a payment,” and added “you will eventually not be dependent on the internet, on smartphones, your thumb will be your bank.“
