State Bank of India (SBI) will launch an integrated banking and shopping platform on Friday. The country’s largest lender is hoping to tap new generation customers and gain cost efficiencies through the platform - Yono (You Only Need One App), Chairman Dinesh Khara said.

Speaking at a banking event organised by industry body IMC, Khara said when the bank initially started Yono, it was thought of as a distribution platform for the retail segment products. "During the course of the journey, SBI could realise Yono's potential for international operations, particularly where we have the retail operations. We could visualise its relevance for Yono business also, and now we have started leveraging it for our agriculture segment," he said.

"Now what we are thinking of is as to how to integrate all these fragmented pieces of Yono and think in terms of something like Yono 2, which is the next version of it. It is something which we are working on and will come out with it and products soon," Khara said. As of March 31, 2021, Yono has over 7.96 crore downloads and about 3.71 crore registrations, according to the bank's annual report for 2020-2021. The bank has onboarded 40,000 overseas customers on the Yono platform as of end-March 2021, it said.  SBI is on course to launch Yono in Singapore, Bahrain, South Africa, and the USA by the end of the financial year 2021-22. Khara further said that SBI looks at technology from the point of view of having oversight on its operations.

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