India’s largest public sector bank State Bank of India has launched its Unified Payments Interface enabled app called “SBI Pay”.
The app is available only on Android platform as of now and allows users to pay or collect money from any phone number or bank account linked to any UPI app, SBI said in a media statement.
The bank will add the facility to make merchant payments and enhance transaction limits on the app in “due course.”
With the current demonetisation drive of the government and the push towards digital/cashless payments, “SBI Pay” is expected to be a game changer in the digital payment ecosystem as the bank has the largest customer base in the country.Arundhati Bhattacharya, Chairman, SBI
The bank said that the iOS app for the same would be rolled out “as and when” National Payments Corporation of India issues specifications for the platform. However, private players like ICICI Bank Ltd. have managed to integrate UPI into their existing iOS apps.
With this launch, SBI becomes the 18th bank in the country to go live with its UPI app, according to the NPCI website. The total number of banks accepting UPI payments now stands at 30.
UPI was launched in August this year to allow participating banks, merchants and consumers to transact with minimal effort and in real time. The UPI infrastructure allows customers to pay or collect money from people or merchants by just putting in their virtual payment address, which is linked to a mobile number and a bank account.
The UPI infrastructure is built over the existing Immediate Payments Service or IMPS, which allows real-time transfer of money.
As of now, the UPI platform is witnessing just about 10,000 transactions a day, but the number is expected to go up by a substantial margin with SBI’s entry into the space. The bank has a customer base of 200 million people across the country with 5.2 million customers registered for mobile banking services.
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