BHIM allow users to send or receive money to or from UPI payment addresses, or to non-UPI based accounts. Unlike mobile wallets which hold money, the BHIM app is only a mechanism which transfers money between different bank accounts. Transactions on BHIM are nearly instantaneous and can be done 24/7 including weekends and bank holidays. BHIM also allows users to check the current balance in their bank accounts and to choose which account to use for conducting transactions, although only one can be active at any time. Users can create their own QR code for a fixed amount of money, which is helpful in merchant-seller-buyer transactions. Users can also have more than one payment address. If the 12-digit Aadhaar number is listed as a payment ID, the BHIM app will not require any biometric authentication or prior registration with the bank or UPI. Version 1.3 allows users to use mobile numbers from their contact book to send money and also save payment addresses for future use without needing to type the address again. User can also check the transaction history, which only shows transactions through BHIM. The company rolled out new feature called BHIM Aadhaar Pay allowing users to send or receive digital payments through Aadhaar authentication.
Currently, there is no charge for transactions from ₹1 to ₹100,000. Some banks might, however, levy a nominal fee for UPI or IMPS transfers. The minimum transaction amount is ₹1, and the maximum number of transactions per day is 10. If the 10-transactions-per-day limit has been reached, the user needs to wait for 24 hours from the last transaction before making another transaction. Currently, the fund transfer limit has been set to a maximum of ₹20,000 per transaction and a maximum of ₹40,000 in a 24-hour period. Indian banks have proposed transaction charges on UPI transactions, but there is no information on whether transactions through BHIM will also be charged.
Language support
BHIM app currently supports 20 languages, though there are 22 scheduled languages of India under 8th Schedule of Constitution of India. In the near future, BHIM is expected to support all 22 official languages of India along with other regional languages which are spoken widely along with the scheduled languages.
Reception
During the 2017 Union budget of India, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that BHIM is currently being used by over 12.5 million Indian citizens. He said that the government will launch two new schemes to promote the use of the BHIM app. One will be referral payments for individuals, and the other will be cashback for merchants who accept payments from BHIM.
Security
In May 2020, , a cyber security firm disclosed that BHIM app has suffered a huge data breach leaking approx , such as name, contact details, Aadhaar card, PAN card, Caste Certificate, fingerprint scans, educational certificates and more. The 4.09 GB files were leaked from a CSC operated website because of misconfigured AWS S3 bucket, and not the official BHIM website. But CSC explicitly mentions that it is working with BHIM and NCPI in partnership. VPNMentor and other cybersecurity experts confirm the data to be authentic, but BHIM and NCPI claim that the breach never took place. The issue has now been fixed.
