With the increase in digitalization in India, many people are doing transactions and payments through UPI instead of paying in cash. UPI stands for Unified Payments Interface and it was mainly introduced for transferring money from one person to another online through mobile phones. There are many UPI apps in India and one such app is BHIM UPI which stands for Bharat Interface for Money. BHIM UPI was launched by NPCI i.e National Payment Corporation of India on 30 December 2016 after demonetization in India. Its main objective was to increase the cashless payments in the country.

How BHIM UPI App Works

A few years ago cashless payment was mainly done through Credit or Debit cards, but nowadays BHIM UPI has become popular and many people are using it in their daily lives. BHIM UPI is now used at many places like making payments at shops while purchasing goods, doing mobile recharge, DTH recharge, Fastag recharge, paying electricity bills, buying airline tickets, movies tickets, etc. In addition to this, you can also use it for sending money from one bank account to another bank account. To transfer money and to make online transactions, we have to create a virtual ID known as UPI ID. This UPI ID is in this form eg. 82104xxxxx@upi. The default UPI ID contains your mobile number.

How to use BHIM UPI App

There are many UPI apps including the BHIM UPI app are available in Playstore. Here are the steps to use BHIM UPI app:-

• Download BHIM UPI on your smartphone and install it.
• After installing the app, open it and select your preferred language i.e English or Hindi
• Now you will be required to allow permission for ‘Managing Phone calls’ and ‘Access to SMS’.
• After this, you will receive an OTP on your mobile phone.
• You will have to verify your mobile number by entering this OTP.
• Now you will be required to enter a 4 digit PIN, after which you have to choose your Bank from the list of various banks.
• Then you will have to enter few details related to your bank.
• After entering the bank details, you are now able to make online transactions through BHIM UPI i.e make payments, send or receive money, etc.

How to recharge Fastag using BHIM UPI

If you are the owner of a vehicle and travel frequently from one place to another, then you must have an idea above what is a Fastag. Fastag is basically a rechargeable card that is attached to the windscreen of your vehicle through which you can make payments at the toll plazas quickly without having to stop there.

As mentioned Fastag is a rechargeable card, so you have to recharge it before the balance in it becomes low. Many banks issues Fastag and you can add the balance to your Fastag by visiting the official website of these banks. Another quick and easy to use the method of recharging Fastag is through UPI-based mobile apps like PhonePe, Paytm, GooglePe, etc. You can also recharge your Fastag with the help of BHIM UPI. Here we are explaining the steps to recharge your Fastag through BHIM UPI

To recharge your FASTag account using BHIM UPI, just follow the simple steps below;

1. Log-in to any BHIM UPIapplication
2. Click on “send” to initiatetransaction
3. Put “netc.vehiclenumber@bankupihandle” in send totab
4. Verify the UPIID
5. Add the amount you want to recharge and then authenticate with yourPIN

While you add your vehicle number for the UPI recharge transaction, please make sure that you add the correct bank UPI handle as per the bank list given below. Also please ensure to verify UPI ID before processing the transaction.

List of Banks and UPI handles

For e.g. Ram is having FASTag of ICICI bank and his vehicle number is MH04AB1234. His UPI ID will be NETC.MH04AB1234@ICICI if his vehicle number is XYZ 9670 his UPI ID will be NETC.XYZ9670@icici

In case you are not sure on which bank was your FASTag issued from, check the FASTag Sticker to find the bank logo / name on the top.

You can also check the SMS received from your for registration / credit of earlier transaction to your FASTag account to know your bank.