BHIM app vs Paytm: Which is a better payment app

BHIM app vs Paytm: Which is a better payment app

With over 57% of market share in the digital payments arena, Paytm is the undoubted beneficiary of India’s continued march towards a cashless economy. This move began last year when PM Modi announced that old 500 and 1,000 rupee notes were no longer legal tender.

This sparked huge interest in Paytm, which now caters to over 200 million users on its platform (active users much lower), catching the eyes of the government.

Under the wing of the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) the government launched the Bharat Interface for Money or BHIM app on 30 December 2016 that’s based on Unified Payment Interface.

Recently, claims have been made by various government spokespersons that BHIM has recorded over 50 lakh transactions, chalking up Rs 1,500 crore in value, but the app has been downloaded by over 2 crore users on Android. It’s also worth noting that:

BHIM has been available on iOS since February this year, but there are no numbers to ascertain how many people have used BHIM on the iPhone.

Paytm has over 200 million users on its platform, out of which they’ve got 122 million active users. 70% of them are on Android, while only 4% of them use iPhone.

In an unexpected and rather surprising development, the reach of BHIM has fallen below that of PhonePe - another UPI-based payments app that got acquired by Flipkart in 2016.

                                                                                               ......Kalagato report

The generic purpose of UPI has enabled multiple payment players to make a case for themselves with the users. The lack of encouragement has resulted in lesser use of BHIM for payments.

Paytm - A Bridge Too Far Right Now for BHIM

Safe to say that BHIM has a long way to go before they can think of competing with Paytm in this market. They are trying to imitate certain aspects of the app (and rightly so) with cashback schemes, QR Code enabled payment options, and lending a hand to others without a smartphone (USSD-enabled payment feature).

But the truth is BHIM with a market share of 28% in the P2P banking segment, lags behind Paytm in its course of innovation even though BHIM has a simple, user-friendly setup in place.