The survey in rural India Shows Only 35.7% people aware of BHIM app

Constantly, the Indian Central Government is trying to make India Digital, to both sides of a rural and urban area. Most of the part of urban India is covered under the digitalization process but it is seen in a survey that rural India is lagging in its path to digital India. The government is trying to promote the BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) app in order to make digital transactions easier, a recent survey claimed that only 35.7% of people in rural India are aware of the app, which has a user base of up to 10 million.

The app was launched in December last year, BHIM is a digital payments app based on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

According to Brickworks Media, a sister concern of research and data analytics company Chrome DM, "Only 16.2% of the users have downloaded the app, which shows a low user platform in rural India and 9% of the users who have BHIM app are completely aware of usage process."

The survey was done on 5,478 rural respondents from around the country.

"Only around 9.2% of the rural people have used the BHIM app for any purpose to date and around 15% of the rural respondents have found he BHIM app easy to operate," the results have been revealed.

Only 20% of the respondents feel that BHIM app is a safe and secure way for payment transactions.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said last week that the BHIM-Aadhaar digital payments platform keeps the power to revolutionize the economy of India.

On the launch event of the new Aadhaar integrated BHIM app in Nagpur, he said that by allowing each Indian to pay digitally using their biometric finger-print on a merchant's biometric-enabled device, the BHIM-Aadhaar will be like a smartphone with a biometric reader and enhance digital payments in a manner that is never been seen in any part of the world.

So, it is suggested that, with over 10 million user base, it is clear that urban India dominates in the usage of the BHIM app. Therefore, the government needs to work more on branding and promoting the app in rural India to increase its awareness and usage.