ICICI Bank launches 'Mera iMobile', a multilingual mobile banking app for rural customers

ICICI Bank has launched the Mera iMobile app, which is designed as a one stop shop for a range of digital services for rural customers. The application allows electronic transfer of funds through multiple payment mechanisms, provides weather updates, up to date prices of vegetables in mandis, and is available in eleven local languages. The application lets you manage your bank accounts, track cards and loans, manage fund transfers, make payments for utility services, and find out information relevant to farmers.

Ms. Chanda Kochhar, MD & CEO, ICICI Bank said, “With the new ‘Mera iMobile’, we will offer our rural and semi-urban customers a unique and unparalleled experience in their interactions with the bank. ‘Mera iMobile’ is a result of extensive research and has evolved into the country’s first comprehensive offering for rural customers on smartphone with 135 services and in eleven Indian languages. It enables any user, even if they are not ICICI Bank customers, to download the app and get access to agri related advisory on mandi prices and weather. These aid in saving time and effort of travel to the branch and the mandi for various services. We believe this app will resonate with the needs of the rural customers and aim to have over half a million downloads in the next six months.”

If you already have an ICICI Bank account, setting up the application is a breeze. The application is lightweight, and is only a 10 MB, free download. You have to agree to the terms of service, after which a verification number will be sent to authenticate your mobile number. Your bank account details are pulled automatically based on your mobile number.

Users then have to set a pin to gain access to the application. Each digit of the pin is visible while entering, but disappears on the input of the subsequent number. There is an automatic timeout feature for security, users will have to feed in the pin again after a period of inactivity. The pin number is asked for every time the app is opened.

For those users with dual Sim phones, it is necessary to set the phone number registered with ICICI Bank as the default Sim for the activation process to work. It is necessary to keep both mobile and data connections alive during the authentication process. If users do not have an account with ICICI Bank, a limited set of services are still available through the app. Users can apply for plastic cards and loans from ICICI. A Kisan Credit card application is included in the app, as well as options for Gold loan and Tractor loan. There is no requirement to be an ICICI customer for availing these services.

A number of retail banking services are offered by the Mera iMobile app. There are over a hundred financial and non financial banking services available, including fund transfer, recharges and bill payments. Fund transfer is handled differently for accounts within ICICI Bank and outside ICICI Bank. IMPS allows instant transfers upto Rs 2 lakh. NEFT facility offers transfer upto Rs 5 lakh, but takes anywhere between two to twenty four hours. RTGS has a minimum amount of Rs 2 lakh, a limit of Rs 5 lakh, and allows for instant transfer. IMPS-MMID allows for transfers upto Rs 10,000. There is a UPI facility as well.

ICICI claims that “[Mera iMobile> is also the first banking app to offer UPI services in multiple Indian languages.” The Bhim app does allow you to make UPI transactions in local languages and was launched in December 2016. Mera iMobile applications allows users to select from a list of pre-generated UPI addresses, create a new UPI address, and disable UPI addresses as well, if they prefer to do so. The Mera iMobile application is available in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Odia, Assamese and Punjabi.

There are nine languages on the Bhim app , the ICICI Bank Mera iMobile app supports Assamese and Punjabi in addition to the languages supported by Bhim. The Bhim app is much more simpler to use for making UPI transactions, with a user interface that is easier to understand.

There are a number of Agri Banking services offered, including Kisan Credit Card, Gold loan and tractor loan. Details such as outstanding interest, available credit limit, and statements can be checked from within the application itself. Users can make payments for Kisan Credit Cards through linked ICICI Bank savings accounts. ICICI Bank intends to include the facility to extend loans from within the app in the short term future.

ICICI is going to set up Wi-Fi enabled posters across the country, that will allow rural users of the application to download it without incurring data charges. Interested readers can visit the local branches in semi-urban and rural areas to download the app through the Wi-Fi posters. The bank also plans to roll out the posters in busy intersections on vans and cycles.

The application has been designed taking into consideration the typical usage in rural areas. One of these considerations is the ability to use the application without internet. 17 services are offered through sms. Information on account balances, recharges, fund transfer and cheque book services are available without the need for the internet, or even logging in to the application. Realtime pricing at mandis and weather updates are not available through sms, without an internet connection. For those with ICICI Bank accounts, an internet connection is needed for the registration of the user. Users can call a helpline to avail customer service from ICICI if they face any problem with the application.

The Agri services for weather and mandi prices are also available without having an ICICI Bank account. The first time the weather section is launched, users have to select state, city, and taluka. The application does not automatically pull your location from the device. If English is chosen as the language, the weather report is delivered with part of the information in the local language of the state. There is a forecast for rain and temperatures for the next six days. The current humidity and the wind-speed velocity is also shown. The utility of this section, buried behind a cluttered menu within the app, is lost on us, considering the information is available as a widget on the home screen for those who regularly need it.

The information for the Agri services are sourced from third parties, which ICICI notes in a disclaimer as soon as a user taps on these services. The application provides pricing information on over 230 crops across 460 mandis. The mandi prices are publicly available on the Open Government Data Portal  and the API for developers to update mandi prices in third party offerings has resulted in a number of applications on the Play Store offering real time prices of foodstuff in mandis around the country.  Krushi Dhan and Gramseva are two such examples. The dedicated apps for mandi prices offer more features than the implementation of mandi price tracking in the Mera iMobile app.

The localisation features as implemented for mandi pricesleave much to be desired. Parts of the application, such as the name of the customer or the bank itself, persistently appear in English irrespective of which language is chosen. The mandi prices for foodstuff appears in the language of the state for which a user looks up the prices. For example, if you want to check prices in Punjab, the prices appear partially in Punjabi and partially in English. The same is true for prices in Karnataka. Local mandi price tracking is only available for ten states.

The Mera iMobile app is different from the iMobile app, also by ICICI Bank, available on Android , Windows Mobile , BlackBerry and iOS . Users can install both applications at once, even though some features overlap between the two apps.  Mera iMobile is available only on the Google Play Store as of now. The application is free, but has advertisements.