NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, November 13, 2015

MUMBAI: The country’s largest lender, State Bank Of India, is all set to become the first bank to offer wallet services for feature phone users. SBI is set to launch mobile wallet “Batua” next month and the service will be available to existing as well as non-SBI customers. The application will be available on Java-enabled mobile phones.

“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, who did not wish to be named, said. “Post-launch customers can log into sbi.co.in download “Batua” on their desktop and load the app on their phone,” he added.

The bank has been ramping up its efforts to become the banker to Digital India. It has an 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.