State Bank of India Poised to Launch ‘SBI Buddy’ M-Wallet (Aug. 17, 2015)
The State Bank of India (SBI) on Tuesday will roll out a mobile wallet called “SBI Buddy,” joining a robust crop of m-wallets in India that includes ICICI Bank’s Pocket, HDFC Bank’s PayZapp, MobiKwik and Paytm. SBI’s m-wallet will be available to all consumers with a bank account and a smartphone, whether or not they have an account with SBI, according to the Economic Times of India.
SBI Buddy enables users to pay wireless bills, buy tickets and make purchases within the wallet from thousands of participating e-commerce merchants, eliminating the need to download each merchant’s app, reports suggest. Users are restricted to daily limits on merchant transactions of Rs 15,000 (US$229). Two other Indian banks including Axis Bank and YES bank also are planning to launch their own m-wallets soon, the publication said. SBI is India’s largest lender to consumers and claims a 20 percent market share with 281 million customers.
In a Paybefore blog, Shift Thought analyst Charmaine Oak wrote that India is on the brink of a huge economic transformation and making money digital is a crucial part of the solution. India’s US$4 billion e-commerce market is set to soar to US$20 billion by 2020, according to a 2014 Assocham-PwC study. What’s more, mobile already accounts for 11 percent of e-commerce sales in India, and its share will jump to 25 percent by 2017, the study found.
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