State Bank of India (SBI) on Thursday unveiled its long-awaited smartphone application Yono – an acronym for ‘you only need one’ – an omni-channel platform that combines a digital bank and an e-commerce superstore. The app will be formally launched by finance minister Arun Jaitley on Friday. In September, FE had reported that the lender had been working on developing a digital platform under the code name Project Lotus, which would give offer users tailor-made deals on their e-commerce purchases, loan offers customised on the basis of data analysis, a spend analyser as well as the facility to buy financial products that do not require a wet signature. The Yono app will allow users to buy all most financial services offered by the SBI group, including pre-approved personal loans. They will be able to open an SBI account in less than five minutes, transfer funds in four clicks, get an overdraft facility against fixed deposits and have a single view of their portfolio with all companies of the SBI group.
The chief draw of the product is the partnerships SBI had developed with 60 leading e-commerce players, including Amazon, Uber, Ola, Myntra, Jabong, Yatra, Airbnb, Swiggy and Byju’s. SBI chairman Rajnish Kumar said the product is for the increasing ranks of the bank’s customers who look for a premium digital experience. “What we want is an integrated channel structure. It is physical presence, it is digital presence, it is ATM,” he said, adding, “So there is a plan that for the next three years how many branches we are going to open, how many ATMs we are going to put in and how many customers we will be serving through digital channels.”
He said that as of date, SBI still sees 22% of its transactions happening at branches. Of the remaining 78% that are non-branch transactions, 36% are digital transactions and the rest are ATM transactions. “Going forward, I don’t foresee that this 22% is undergoing a major change,” Kumar said. There may be some change in the composition of ATM and digital transactions, he observed.