State Bank of India's (SBI)'s mobile wallet, SBI Buddy, now has a cumulative 10.52 million registered users. In the quarter ended March 2017 (Q4FY17) the bank added 1.9 million registered users. The number of transactions in Q4 stood at 8.75 million and the average number of transactions in a day increased to 0.097 million. For the full financial year, the number of transactions stood at 20.76 million and the average number of transactions in a day stood at 0.057 million. SBI Buddy wallet ran into controversy earlier this month. SBI MD Rajnish Kumar has told multiple media outlets that the bank is allowing cash withdrawals from the wallet via ATM from June (onwards) with a charge of Rs 25 plus Rs 3.5 service tax. SBI had to issue a clarification recently after a widespread outcry when it posted a circular which said that ATM withdrawals will be charged Rs 25. It later said that only cash withdrawals from the Buddy wallet will be charged. However, the wallet should not allow cash withdrawals as it is a semi-closed wallet. Mobile banking: Cumulatively, SBI's mobile banking app has 19.8 million and the bank added around 3.05 million users in Q4. In the financial year, the mobile banking app saw around 220.24 million transactions and 60.09 million transactions. The average number of transactions a day stood at 668 in Q4. POS machines: Note that SBI has been aggressively pushing POS machine adoption in the country. In May 2016, it overtook HDFC Bank as largest issuer of POS terminals.…
