Lalitha Nataraj, MD & CEO, NPCI BHIM Services Ltd, at a press conference in Chennai on Tuesday | Photo credit: BIJOY GHOSH
UPI app Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM), owned by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), has seen a three-fold increase in the number of transactions in the first nine months of 2025, the company said here on Tuesday.
BHIM achieved 119.8 million transactions in September 2025, a steady increase from 38.9 million in January. Earlier in 2024, the average monthly transactions were 25 million.
“BHIM as a payment app is not new. We launched in 2017 but have been experimenting with features for a long time. We did not promote it as a competing app. But over the past year, we have felt the need for a Bharat app for payments,” said Lalitha Nataraj, MD & CEO, NBSL. “We realize that just a ‘Made in India’ sentiment is not enough. It is just a starting point,” she added.
The app processed transactions worth ₹16,803 crore in September 2025, a 94 percent growth in value compared to the same period last year. BHIM reported a turnover of ₹3.7 crore for the financial year ended March 2025 and incurred a loss of ₹68 crore in the financial year.
Separate subsidiary
Since its inception in June 2024 as a separate subsidiary, the entity has focused on building its brand and incentivizing customers with cashbacks to use the app. Currently, the market share among UPI apps is around 0.65 percent, well below the share of established market leaders PhonePe and Google Pay.
Launched in March 2025, the new BHIM Payments app supports more than 15 Indian languages, including Tamil. Nataraj says they are working to integrate more languages. The app offers an ad-free, simple interface and is optimized for areas with low connectivity.
Regarding strategies to increase market share, Nataraj says they are working closely with banks to increase adoption among their customers. “We’re trying to see why this happens [BHIM] the entire package can be embedded in the bank’s mobile banking apps; We are trying to strengthen the banks’ mobile banking apps and trying to work with the merchants in this way,” she said. “We are also working with some government corridors to open up some white spaces, which you will see in the coming months,” she added.
Among the several additional features of BHIM is a ‘Spend Analytics’ option to analyze out-of-pocket spending on the UPI app. It also has a ‘Family Mode’, which allows users to enroll family members, track shared expenses, and assign specific payments.
As far as value-added offerings are concerned, BHIM is currently not keen on taking out a personal loan or a credit card product. “We’re just taking our time to walk the path because we want to make sure we don’t bombard customers with options and cross-sell opportunities,” she added.
Published on October 14, 2025
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