India’s largest bank, State Bank of India has partnered with Accenture and MasterCard and launched its own mobile wallet app called ‘SBI Buddy’. The app is available on the Google Play Store and is free to download while an iOS version will be released soon. Like other mobile wallet apps, users can add money to the app wallet via debit card, net banking or IMPS. The added money can then be use to book movie tickets, flights, hotels, pay dues, recharge mobile phone, and pay bills. The app also lets you send money to others. The best part about the is that app can be used by SBI customers as well as non-SBI customers.
Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley launched the app along with Jayant Sinha, Minister of State of Finance and Hasmukh Adhia, Secretary, Department of Financial Services. Regarding the app launch, SBI chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya said, "This is one more step in our ambition of becoming the provider-of-choice for customers' everyday needs, both financial and non-financial. Mobile is going to be at the centre of this transformation and this application will help us strengthen our proposition through this medium."
To make the app successful, SBI has tied up with various merchants for end-to-end solutions. Users will be able to access merchants directly after installing the SBI Buddy app with no need of installing merchants’ app on their devices.
SBI has setup a FAQ page where they have mentioned that users can keep a maximum balance of Rs. 10,000 at one time. In addition to this, the daily limits on merchant transaction are at Rs. 15,000 and monthly limits are at Rs. 20,000. There is also a limit of Rs. 10,000 on total reload in a month.
In February of this year, ICICI Bank had launched their own mobile wallet service called Pockets.