India is about to embark on a new chapter in its instant payment system as the central bank has proposed the incorporation of conversational payments into the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) through artificial intelligence (AI).
The industry’s swift embrace of this proposal underscores the potential for expediting the nationwide adoption of this digital platform.
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das said that talks are underway with several countries, including Japan, regarding UPI linkage.
Currently, India has such an arrangement with Singapore and has also solidified an agreement to link UPI with the Instant Payment Platform of the United Arab Emirates. This strategic move will facilitate prompt, convenient, secure, and cost-effective cross-border fund transfers.
During his monetary policy speech on Thursday on harnessing new technologies for enhancing the digital payments experience for users, Das announced RBI’s intention to introduce “conversational payments” on UPI, enabling users to interact with AI-powered systems for making payments.
Reports indicate that this conversational UPI payment feature will initially support Hindi and English, with plans to extend it to other Indian languages in the future. The National Payments Corporation of India is expected to issue guidelines on this matter soon.
Governor Das emphasised that UPI has gained international recognition as one of the world’s most efficient and advanced payment systems, a sentiment shared during the recent Group of Twenty meeting of finance ministers and governors
George Alexander Muthoot, MD of Muthoot Finance, noted, “As a digital-first non-banking financial company, we believe that these measures will further drive financial inclusion and enhance the adoption and utilisation of digital payments in India.”
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