BHIM app needs a overhaul


What is BHIM ?

BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) is a mobile app developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) that facilitates quick, secure, and easy transactions using the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). It was launched by the Government of India to promote digital transactions and enable cashless payments.

What’s your(author) issue with the app now ?

tbh, when compared with other payment apps, BHIM is the most light weight app till date. No big features, notifications and no fuss. But the biggest issue with the app is the UX. I’m clueless about the designers point of view in selecting that colour palette, placement of buttons, features - user journey etc existing in the app.


Places where there is a scope to improve the UX in the app are :-

Generally most of the apps are utilising the core features/API’s provided by the mobile OS companies, Google and iOS. UPI team didn’t utilise the most important feature for making user journey more seamless. Here they should have added shortcuts to core features - scan the code, send to favourites, approve payment request, check bank account balance, tap the machine.

2.Verify the ID/number:

We all know that in India all the mobile phone numbers are 10-digit in length and also all the UPI id’s end with “@upi/@okhdfc/@okybl” etc. So whenever user finishes entering the UPI id’s with such ending or when they enter 10 digit number’s app should check the validity of the number/id automatically. Here also the user should do a additional step to check the id 

3. Colour palette & dead icons - 

This part is the most important zone of the app and this is where the team has did a blunder i feel. The colours for the all the icons here are same which makes it a little difficult to identify the exact thing we are looking for. Even I personally found it very hard to find “approve to pay” icon whenever I am trying to pay money. Team should have opted for colours a little different to each and every icon which would have made a lot of difference in UX. Their intention to emphasise more on UPI lite balance and Credit card zones, as visible in the screenshot, should have been little less and should have been more on core features icons.

4. Abandoned features/icons:

Payments to bills is also a vital feature to users. Few may argue that they may not be using it on a daily basis, but still the users will be using them if we do provide them at the proper place which in turn makes their journey easier. They don’t need to put extra effort in using that feature. Also when we swipe to the right of this area we go into a new page where we can see a ton of bills categories that we can utilise. This is similar to how internet gives us a gateway to access data about each and every corner of this world. Even in todays world there are people in tier 2-3 cities and villages where they try to go to a local office or internet centres to pay for bills, where they are charged additional fees to pay bills. If the govt’s intention of bringing services to users on phone is very much core to them then this zone also needs to have a better UX and user should be guided to that zone while onboarding. 

5. Scan to pay & Tap to pay zones: 

even in this area the icons are too small and also they do cover other zone. Even this also needs to be properly redesigned at the first place.

6. Grouping of services across the whole app:

all the services available in this entire app needs to be consolidated and put in one single place for simplicity so that user don’t struggle to find a certain service. As I said above all the services may not be used on a daily places but all should give proper visibility to the users.

Hope that NPCI UPI team looks into this kind of UX issues at least in their upcoming releases and make the user experience way more better and seamless.