Decoded: Everything You Need to Know About PM Modi’s BHIM App

From how to download it to making payments, here’s a use guide to India’s latest payment app.

BHIM app on Android. (Photo: The Quint)

At dusk on November 8, Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed to have launched a war against black money with his demonetisation announcement. After he sought 50 days to bring things back to normalcy, a lot was expected from PM Modi on 30 December, when the 30-day period ended.

Fast forward to that day, and all we got is a promise to make India a cashless economy, and the launch of BHIM (Bharat Inteface for Money).

This is UPI-based app, seen as an alternative to Paytm, has been developed by the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI), an umbrella organisation for all retail payment systems in India.

Want to know more about the features of the BHIM app? Get all the lowdown here:

Enter the BHIM

The BHIM App. (Photo Courtesy: Google PlayStore) 

How to get it?
Download the app from the Google Play Store. As you can see above, make sure you download the legit BHIM app, which has been developed by NPCI. The app sized at less than 2MB is not only light on size, but fortunately, gets an easy to use interface as well.

How to use it?
After downloading the app, here’s what you need to make sure before using it:

1. Register yourself on UPI with your bank
2. Create a virtual payment address (VPA), which looks like xxx@icici or abc@hdfc
3. You will get an SMS confirming the creation of the VPA from your bank

These banks are UPI supported right now.

Once you do that, head over to the BHIM app to get started.

BHIM app interface. (Photo Courtesy: App Screengrab)

More steps to follow. (Photo Courtesy: App Screengrab)

Select the language of choice; English or Hindi for now
Register a 4-digit PIN that lets you unlock the BHIM app
Select your bank from the list given
Get directly linked to your bank account via your registered mobile number
Use the mobile number as your VPA ie 98xxxxx@upi

In case you’re not able to send/receive money (we had issues with it), then make sure of doing this:
- Go to the Bank Profile option on the home page of the BHIM app
- Select the Reset PIN option
- Feed the last 6 digits of your debit card, and expiry month/year
- You get an SMS confirming the use of VPA, enabling payment via the BHIM app

The last few steps before you can make payments via BHIM. (Photo Courtesy: App Screengrab)

- Via BHIM, you can send up to Rs 10,000 in 24 hours, with a monthly payment limit of Rs 20,000
- No extra charges for transactions via BHIM
- Unlike Paytm, your money is linked directly to your bank account

Works Without Internet Too

Unlike Paytm’s offline banking option, BHIM lets you send/receive money on a feature phone via the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) method. This can be used by dialling *99# and these are the options available:

BHIM works without internet as well. (Photo Courtesy: App Screen grab)

BHIM Gets UPI’s 3-Layer Security

Saket Modi’s Lucideus Tech is one of the companies that worked on UPI’s back-end security architecture.

UPI/BHIM requires a cell phone to make a successful payment and packs in three-actor authentication, making it the safest way to transfer funds online.

Saket Modi, CEO, Lucideus Tech

UPI, with its three-factor authentication, is more secure than any mobile wallet app. (Photo: The Quint)

BHIM is expected to be available for iPhone users in the coming weeks, as stated by Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant. Along with that, support for other languages will also be coming to the app soon. Aadhaar is also supposed to play a big role in payments using BHIM in the near future.

But will BHIM change India’s digital banking future forever, as we’ve been promised? Let’s wait and watch.