BHIM app
BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) is a mobile payment application developed and operated by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) . It functions as the reference UPI client: the officially maintained, government-affiliated UPI app against which all other UPI participants (third-party application providers, PSP banks) are benchmarked for API compliance. BHIM was launched on 30 December 2016 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Digi Dhan Mela event in Talkatora Stadium, New Delhi, approximately seven weeks after the demonetisation of 500- and 1,000-rupee notes.
The name BHIM is an acronym and also a reference to B.R. Ambedkar, the economist and social reformer who chaired the drafting committee of the Constitution of India.
Launch and purpose
NPCI designed BHIM to address a specific gap in the post-demonetisation environment: most UPI apps available in late 2016 were affiliated with commercial banks (requiring the user to hold an account at that bank) or were early-stage third-party apps that lacked widespread awareness. BHIM was intended as a universal, bank-agnostic UPI app that any user could download regardless of which bank they held an account with.
The app supports all banks that are live on UPI, which numbered over 600 by 2025. A user can link a bank account from any UPI-member bank to BHIM and transact through that account, without the bank needing to have its own UPI app.
BHIM’s design philosophy prioritised simplicity over features. The early versions had a minimal interface: a QR scanner for payments, a VPA-based transfer screen, a collect request function, and a balance enquiry. This starkness was both a strength (accessible to users unfamiliar with digital payments) and a weakness (less feature-rich than commercially-operated competitors).
Features
Core UPI functions
BHIM supports the standard UPI transaction types:
- Send money: Transfer to a VPA, a mobile number, an account-IFSC pair, or a scanned QR code.
- Request money: Send a collect request to a VPA.
- Scan and pay: Scan any UPI QR code (static or dynamic) and authorise payment with UPI PIN.
- Mandate management: View, approve, and revoke UPI mandates , including IPO ASBA mandates.
- Balance enquiry: Check linked bank account balance without leaving the app.
- Transaction history: View transaction log.
BHIM as a mandate approval tool
BHIM is a common choice for approving UPI mandates for IPO applications . The app displays mandate requests on the home screen prominently, with a dedicated Approve mandate label, and renders the full NPCI mandate XML parameters, useful for verifying that mandate details match the IPO application before PIN entry. For users who receive a mandate notification but whose primary UPI app does not show it, BHIM’s direct bank connection (without TPAP middleware) often surfaces mandates that third-party app notification chains have delayed.
Interoperability
Because BHIM is the reference implementation, it is the app most likely to remain compatible with any NPCI-introduced UPI feature at launch. New mandate types, new UPI product variants, and new QR code standards are typically available on BHIM before or simultaneously with commercial apps.
Market position and decline
Initial traction
BHIM was downloaded approximately 17 million times in the first week of availability, reflecting the extreme demand for digital payment tools in the post-demonetisation environment. By mid-2017, it was the most-downloaded app in India on the Android platform.
Erosion by commercial competitors
From 2017 onwards, PhonePe and Google Pay, both backed by large technology companies (Walmart-Flipkart and Google, respectively), invested heavily in cashback incentives, merchant rewards, and interface development. These commercial apps offered features that BHIM, as a government-affiliated not-for-profit product, could not match:
- Integrated rewards, cashback and referral programmes.
- Merchant discovery and offers integration.
- Bill payments, ticket booking and financial products within the app.
- Significantly larger customer support operations.
By 2020, BHIM’s share of UPI transaction volume had fallen to approximately 4-5 per cent. By 2022, it had fallen below 1 per cent. PhonePe and Google Pay together accounted for approximately 80-85 per cent of UPI volumes by this time.
Government promotion and the BHIM-UPI brand
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and NPCI continued to promote the BHIM-UPI brand as an umbrella label for the entire UPI ecosystem, not just the BHIM app. The BHIM UPI QR code became the standard label on merchant QR codes regardless of which PSP app the merchant was registered on. This branding created some confusion between the BHIM app (a specific UPI client) and the BHIM-UPI label (used generically for any UPI transaction). For most purposes, a merchant displaying a BHIM UPI QR code will accept payment from PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm, or any other UPI app, not exclusively from the BHIM app.
BHIM 2.0
NPCI launched BHIM 2.0 in 2018 with additional features including:
- Support for UPI 2.0 mandate creation and management.
- Signed QR code support.
- Overdraft account linking.
- IPO application integration (for exchanges that offered a BHIM app-based application path).
A further refresh in 2022-23 added UPI Lite support and improved the interface to narrow the gap with commercial competitors. However, market share did not recover materially; users who had migrated to PhonePe or Google Pay showed little reason to return to BHIM absent a compelling differentiator.
Technical role
As the reference UPI client, BHIM is used by NPCI for:
- API compliance testing of new UPI versions.
- Benchmarking authentication latency and settlement confirmation.
- End-to-end testing of new mandate types before commercial rollout.
- Demonstration to regulators and foreign counterparts of UPI capabilities.
NPCI also maintains a BHIM SDK (software development kit) that other developers can use as a reference for implementing UPI flows in their own apps.
Regulatory and governance status
BHIM is owned and operated by NPCI, a not-for-profit Section 8 company. It does not charge transaction fees to users or merchants (consistent with the zero-MDR policy on UPI). NPCI covers BHIM’s operating costs from its general switch-fee revenue.
As a government-affiliated product, BHIM’s development priorities can be influenced by government policy direction. The SEBI mandate on UPI ASBA and the expansion of BHIM’s mandate management features are examples of policy-driven product development.
Supported languages
BHIM supports multiple Indian languages in addition to English and Hindi: Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Odia, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, and Punjabi, among others. Language support is a deliberate accessibility feature: NPCI designed BHIM for users whose primary language is not Hindi or English, consistent with its mandate to extend digital payments to the broadest possible population. The language can be changed from the settings screen; the UPI PIN entry screen (rendered by the NPCI SDK) also adapts to the selected language.
Offline capabilities: UPI Lite integration
BHIM integrates UPI Lite, NPCI’s on-device wallet for small-value payments without real-time bank connectivity. The user loads up to ₹2,000 into the BHIM UPI Lite wallet; payments of up to ₹500 can then be made using the local wallet balance without a UPI PIN and without requiring active internet connectivity at the time of payment. This makes BHIM particularly useful in areas with intermittent data connections.
UPI Lite balances are not covered by bank deposit insurance (they are not bank deposits) and are not interest-bearing. If the BHIM app is uninstalled and re-installed without recovery, the UPI Lite balance may be lost; NPCI recommends maintaining only necessary small amounts in the UPI Lite wallet.
BHIM business correspondents
NPCI operates a BHIM BC (Business Correspondent) programme under which banking correspondents in rural and semi-urban areas use BHIM-based terminals to facilitate basic banking transactions (deposits, withdrawals, account balance enquiries) on behalf of customers without smartphone access. This is distinct from the retail BHIM app; the BC variant operates under a separate certification and is linked to the AePS infrastructure for biometric authentication.
BHIM Aadhaar Pay
A related application, BHIM Aadhaar Pay, allows merchants to accept UPI payments from customers using the customer’s Aadhaar-linked biometric fingerprint, without the customer needing a smartphone. The merchant holds the BHIM Aadhaar Pay terminal; the customer provides their Aadhaar number and fingerprint; the payment is authenticated and settled via AePS. This extends UPI acceptance to customers who own feature phones or no phone at all.
Privacy and data handling
BHIM is operated by NPCI, a not-for-profit Section 8 entity. Unlike commercial TPAPs, BHIM does not carry advertising, does not offer in-app financial products sold by third-party commercial partners, and does not use transaction data for personalised marketing. Transaction metadata is processed by NPCI’s central switch for settlement and fraud monitoring, consistent with NPCI’s overall data policies.
BHIM does collect device information, app usage analytics, and UPI transaction metadata for operational and compliance purposes. This data is not sold to third parties. BHIM’s privacy policy is published on the NPCI website and in the app’s store listing.
Related articles
- Unified Payments Interface (UPI)
- NPCI
- UPI mandate
- UPI 2.0 mandate explained
- Payment Service Provider (PSP) bank
- How to approve a UPI mandate for an IPO application
- ASBA
References
- NPCI, BHIM App, Product Overview, https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/bhim-app/product-overview (accessed May 2026).
- Press Information Bureau, Prime Minister launches BHIM app, 30 December 2016.
- NPCI, UPI Monthly Product Statistics, October 2025.
- Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Digital Payments Dashboard, 2023.
- NPCI, BHIM 2.0 Feature Release Notes, 2018.
- Business Standard, PhonePe, Google Pay dominate UPI; BHIM share falls below 1 per cent, 2022.