Surge in SBI e-wallet users

Mumbai, Dec. 18: The rise in digital transactions following demonetisation has had a positive impact on SBI Buddy, the 19-month-old e-wallet from the country's largest bank.

The number of transactions has increased almost four times, with daily transaction at around 80,000. During the period ended September, the product had more than five million registrations.

The lender had launched the mobile wallet application in August last year in collaboration with Accenture and MasterCard. Besides allowing people to send and receive money, it offers facilities such as mobile recharge, payment of electricity bills along with flight and rail bookings.

Recently, the Reserve Bank of India has doubled the digital wallet balance to Rs 20,000 to incentivise digital transactions.

According to Rajnish Kumar, managing director (national banking group) of the SBI, the bank has seen a huge increase in the demand for other digital modes such as POS machines. He added that the segment had become a "sellers'" market.

"Banks earlier used to chase the merchants for installing these machines. The situation has now reversed after the demonetisation," a banker said.

As on September 30, close to 79 per cent of the transactions done by the bank's customers had been through the digital mode such as internet and mobile banking, POS and ATM, against 71 per cent in the previous year. The number of transactions in branches have come down to nearly 21 per cent from almost 29 per cent in the year-ago period.

State Bank of India