Indian banks to bring their digital payment solutions under Bhim

Banks will now display Bhim as a prefix to their own UPI applications in a bid to erase confusion among users.

This will help promote UPI as the single means of payment for smartphone-based small value retail transactions, according to bankers who see this as a branding exercise similar to how merchants display payment options for credit and debit card users.

This should help clear all forms of confusion among merchants accepting UPI and consumers using UPI for payments. Bankers in the know told ET that since BHIM has become synonymous with digital payments, it will also help people to identify with the application easily. Further, it will also give a single identity to all the UPI apps of the different banks. Also, this could give access to the promotional campaigns run by the government to the users of bank-led UPI apps which till now was restricted to Bhim users.

Bhim was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, last December, as a government promoted UPI application to promote digital emerged as a direct competitor for bank-led UPI apps like Axis Pay, SBI Pay, as well as non-bank UPI players like Flipkart-owned PhonePe and internet major Googles payment application Tez.

National Payments Corporation of India which runs the BHIM application and manages the UPI railroads, has notified banks to place BhimUPI prominently at merchant checkout locations.

Industry executives are of the view that if every UPI app gets branded as Bhim, then it could have a major effect on merchant adoption of the payment interface and will also benefit non-bank payment platforms. As of now, UPI adoption has mainly been driven by peer-to-peer transactions.

All banking or non-banking UPI apps work on the same back end promoted by NPCI, since all these apps are interoperable the decision to market UPI as a common brand will help popularise it among the masses.