NEW DELHI, India— India is seeking to use artificial intelligence to expand digital payments to rural areas.
“While India’s Universal Payments Interface (UPI) is now used by around 350 million, it has had trouble breaking into the country’s more rural regions due to spotty internet access and lower levels of literacy,” Pymnts.com said, citing a Financial Times report.
It’s why the Reserve Bank of India has recently unveiled a plan for “conversational” payments, allowing UPI users to make verbal transfer instructions on their phones which will be processed using AI-based speech recognition, Pymnts.com said.
Open-Source Tools
The service will use open-source AI language tools developed by the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, and will at first be available in English and Hindi before expanding to include other languages, according to the report.
The central bank said users without Internet access will be able to make transactions using near field communication technology, allowing for “retail digital payments in situations where internet [or] telecom connectivity is weak or not available,” Pymnts.com explained.
Dominating the Sector
The launch is taking place at a time UPI is dominating the retail sector in India, with close to half of all retail transactions happening over the platform, according to PYMNTS’ research.
“That research shows that 48% of consumers in India made their last retail purchase using UPI. The system is more popular for digital retail purchases: 55% of India’s consumers paid for their most recent digital retail purchase through UPI, versus 37% for in-store retail purchases,” Pymnts.com said.
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