NPCI BHIM Services (NBSL), a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), will soon roll out value-added financial services on the Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) app platform, beginning with credit cards.
“We should be launching some value-added products starting with credit card distribution in two-three months,” Lalitha Nataraj, managing director and CEO of NBSL, told FE.
What is Lalitha Nataraj say?
On Tuesday, the company officially launched a full delegation feature for UPI Circle. The feature allows a primary user to authorise a secondary user to initiate and complete UPI payments directly from the former’s account with a monthly limit of up to ₹15,000 and an expiry period of up to five years. “This enables smoother day-to-day digital payments among families, dependents, or staff while maintaining a clear oversight of all transactions,” she said.
Nataraj said the company will begin distributing credit cards with partner banks, especially RuPay credit cards, which are relevant to the app.
“We will need various licences for other financial products. We will do that in due course,” Nataraj said.
A history of BHIM’s products
BHIM’s first app version was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in December 2016, a month after the demonetisation. However, its market share among UPI apps remains below 1%, far behind majors like PhonePe, Paytm, and Google Pay.
In June 2024, BHIM was spun off as a separate NPCI subsidiary and has since been focusing on building the brand, incentivising users with cash backs, and improving product features.
In March, the company rolled out ‘BHIM 3.0’, expanding the app to over 15 Indian languages and enabling functionality in low-internet areas to improve reach. It has also widened partnerships to bring diverse user groups into the UPI ecosystem. Last week, NBSL partnered with Chennai One, Tamil Nadu’s multi-modal transport app, to let commuters buy bus, metro, or suburban rail tickets for ₹1 on their first payment with the BHIM app. “We are working on some of these corridors which we feel will help us propagate digitisation to a very different kind of a base,” she said.
The traction is beginning to show. BHIM’s volumes nearly tripled between January and October this year – from 38.9 million to 135.90 million. Transaction value also more than doubled to ₹20,026 crore from ₹9,604.24 crore. “I feel the UPI circle feature will open a segment which will probably net new customers to UPI,” she said.