Indian Banks to bring their digital payments Apps under BHIM

In an effort to give a boost to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), public and private banks are set to align their digital payment solutions under Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM).

BHIM will be featured as a prefix to the UPI application of every bank. As a part of rebranding move, bank-led UPI apps will be renamed as BHIM SBI Pay, BHIM Axis Pay and so on.

The aim is to further promote UPI as the most important solution for smartphone-based small value retail transactions. According to bankers, this branding experiment is similar to the way merchants advertise payment options for credit and debit card users.

Talking to ET, Bankers told that since BHIM has become synonymous with digital payments, it will also help people to identify with the application easily. “This should help clear all forms of confusion among merchants accepting UPI and consumers using UPI for payments.”

Launched in December 2016, Bharat Interface for Money, a government promoted UPI application to promote digital transaction, has 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 Google's payment application Tez.

Industry experts say 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.

Besides, in the last couple of months, many companies outside the payments space have also embraced the government's UPI technologies.