State Bank of India (SBI) is planning to launch a complete digital bank by revamping its current mobile application ‘Yono’ as ‘Only Yono'.

The bank is looking to implement the revamp in 12-18 months, which will include migration of the existing Yono customers to Only Yono.

“Only Yono is envisaged as the next generation of Yono which will make SBI ready to launch a complete digital bank with a leaner and modular architecture, more streamlined journeys, sleek and personalised customer-centric design and capturing value from ecosystems," SBI said in a document.

Incidentally, Niti Aayog had released a draft discussion paper in November on licensing of Digital Bank. Though there is no separate licensing arrangement for digital banks, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may come out with formal guidelines for such banks.

The push to Only Yono will not only be in terms of features and functionality but also in terms of ease and customer experience. The scaling up of Yono to the next level will help SBI to consolidate its leadership in this space.

Launched in 2017, Yono has seen exponential growth with 70.5 million downloads and a user base of 37.09 million as on March 31, 2021. In September 2020, the then SBI chairman Rajnish Kumar said Yono could be hived off into a separate subsidiary and could fetch a valuation of over $40 billion.