YONO 2.0 Launched: SBI pushes next-gen digital banking, Expands workforce by 6,500

SBI launches YONO 2.0, a faster and more secure digital banking platform with improved UPI, unified technology, enhanced security, and a seamless app-web experience designed to boost India’s digital banking adoption.

State Bank of India (SBI) today launched YONO 2.0, its upgraded flagship digital banking platform, in a Mumbai event. As part of its digital banking strategy, SBI has given the app a host of new technological upgrades, and claimed that it will change the way millions of Indians interact with financial services.

“The whole strategy of YONO was to give you a complete different experience,” said SBI Chairman C.S. Setty at the launch. “The new version of YONO will have a next-generation platform, with a completely new technology stack which will make it much more efficient.”

Developed over the last eight years since the launch of YONO (You Only Need One), SBI’s revamped digital platform comes with a host of improvements under the hood, Setty said. The app’s new technical stack is designed to give users a quicker, simpler, and more resilient digital experience on their low-end smartphones, and across low bandwidth and patchy internet connections. YONO 2.0, Setty promised, would let users “perform all your banking functions – including UPI – in a much more easier way, which is hassle-free.”

Chief among these upgrades is the new platform’s technology backbone, according to SBI. Mobile banking and internet banking, rebranded as YONO Net Banking, now work on the same code base, Setty said, in what he described as a “game-changing, monumental” shift for SBI. This single, consistent technology infrastructure is designed to provide a much smoother experience between the platforms, SBI claimed, and will also let customers shift between digital channels much more easily in future.

At a functional level, this second-generation version of YONO has a number of user-facing improvements. Customers can now, SBI says, focus more easily on the core banking tasks they care most about: checking their account balances, transferring money, paying bills, and using Unified Payments Interface (UPI), now all much faster and simpler on YONO 2.0. The bank has also rebuilt its UPI payments stack from the ground up, to better compete with the third-party apps (Google Pay, PhonePe) dominating the market.

Enhancing and streamlining the core banking experience is only one part of SBI’s YONO 2.0 upgrade, though. The bank has also invested in upgrading security controls on the platform, with new, more robust security for transactions, and a new one-time password (OTP) process that it claims will reduce transaction failure rates on weak networks, a particularly pernicious issue for consumers in India.

At the same time, SBI has set itself a target of taking the app’s installed base of 9–10 crore customers to 20 crore digital customers in the next two years, SBI said. To this end, the bank will add new employees to on-board customers through the platform, both in branch and online, during the transition, which may take the next six to eight months as all features and capabilities are fully turned on. This includes about 6,500 new digital support staff, which SBI will hire over the coming months.

As the new app ramps up, digital will become a key battleground for SBI in India. The bank is counting on YONO to “significantly” reduce service costs and allow it to scale up its financial inclusion efforts, CEO R. Gandhi told the event. At the same time, as the rollout of digital services like YONO 2.0 and account opening for UPI continues apace, SBI and its customers will likely be demanding more from the bank’s app and service offerings in the future. YONO 2.0 could very well be a key piece in determining how well SBI is able to compete in the Indian digital banking ecosystem over the coming years.