Country’s largest bank, State Bank of India, is all set to launch SBI mobile wallet Batua next month and with this SBI will become the first bank to offer wallet services for java-enable feature phone users. The ‘Batua’ service will be available to both existing and non-SBI customers.
“We want to cater to both India and Bharat and this new initiative is part of our efforts to cater to Bharat,” a State Bank of India official.
Customers, post launch of the service, can log into sbi.co.in download “Batua” on their desktop and load the app on their phone.
With annual IT budget of Rs 3,000 crore, a 20% market share, a customer base of 28.6 crore, of which 2.3 crore are net banking customers and 1.2 crore are mobile banking customers, SBI is putting all its efforts to be the banker of modern Digital India.
SBI has also launched its mobile wallet ‘SBI Buddy’ for smart phone users in August this year, that allows customers to access seller’s apps directly without downloading 
them separately, to send money to new and registered customers, book movies, flights, hotels as well as use the mobile wallet for shopping. While with Batua, customers will only be able to load, pay and receive money. Hence Batua can be taken as smaller version app of SBI buddy with the aim of payment and receiving amounts.
SBI is also planning to launch another lighter version of the app for very basic phones that even do not entails internet access and will be focusing on using Instant Messaging service to allow customers to pay and receive money. This app will allow SBI to provide mobile payment services even to very basic, rural and semi-urban, not much technology updated consumer base.
SBI has a total of 8.5 crore financial inclusion accounts with a transaction volume of over Rs 29,000 crore at the end of September 2015. SBI has deposits of nearly Rs 5,931 crore in these financial inclusion accounts.
Indian Banking industry is largely focused on Mobile and internet technology advancement and multiple Banks have launched their apps that have been very popular amongst users.
HDFC Bank launched PayZapp, a oneclick payment and purchase solution. It has also launched Chillr, a third party app platform that enables users to transfer money to anybody in their phone book contacts. The other apps like ‘Pockets’ launched by ICICI bank, ‘Lime’ launched by Axis Bank that enables payments, Banking, shopping put tough competition to mobile wallets like Paytm, Mobikwik, PayUMoney, recently launched ‘Ola Money’ etc.
