The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has launched the Bharat Interface for Money, a.k.a, BHIM 3.0 app. It comes with new features for UPI payments, such as splitting expenses, spend analytics, and a built-in assistant for pending bill notifications. The app has now been optimised to work with slow and unstable internet connections. Here’s everything that you should know about the BHIM 3.0 app.
BHIM 3.0 App For UPI Payments: What’s New?
The BHIM 3.0 update is the biggest revamp for India’s homegrown UPI app since its inception in 2016. It has received five new features, which include:
- Split Expenses: Users can now create a bill and split it with family and friends. The app will track and notify when a certain member pays their share, along with information on pending contributions.
- Family Mode: BHIM 3.0 now allows users to link family members and track shared expenses. It can also be used to assign specific payments such as rent, utilities, etc., to a specific member. This feature will help families in better financial planning as per their monthly budgets.
- Spend Analytics: The BHIM app will now show a comprehensive breakdown of all the expenses across various categories by analysing the monthly transaction history of the user. NPCI says that the UI is designed to be user-friendly, making it easier for users to track their spending without any complex tools.
- Built-in Assistant: A new Action Needed feature has been added to the app, which will remind users when they have pending bills such as electricity, water, gas, telephone, and other utilities. The BHIM app will now also notify users when their UPI Lite balance is low.
- Optimised for low network: The BHIM 3.0 app has been optimised to work on low and unstable internet connections to prevent transaction failure due to poor network connectivity. This will help users in remote areas to seamlessly make UPI payments without worrying about the money getting stuck.
In addition to these features, the BHIM 3.0 app also gets a security upgrade. The latest version comes with improved encryption and safety to protect users from financial fraud from external, potentially harmful apps.
NPCI has also integrated BHIM Vega in the new update. It will serve as an in-app payment solution for merchants by including online merchant platforms. However, we are not sure what this means exactly. We can expect more details on this once the update starts rolling out widely.
The BHIM 3.0 app will start rolling out to all users in April 2025. NPCI says that it will be a phased rollout. Users can update the BHIM app on both Android and iOS via the Google Play Store and Apple App Store respectively.
