UPI payments through conversations with AI system to be rolled out soon, says RBI

The RBI announced on Thursday that conversational payments on UPI will be introduced soon, which will allow users to engage in natural language conversations with an AI-driven system to carry out transactions.

RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said that this user-friendly channel will be accessible through both smartphone and feature phone-based UPI platforms, to enable a broader reach and deeper digital penetration.

Initially launching in Hindi and English, the feature will be expanded to other Indian languages as well to cover a larger number of users.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is expected to issue instructions to implement the UPI Conversational Payments system shortly.

In order to promote wider adoption of UPI Lite, the RBI has increased the transaction limit to Rs 500 from Rs 200 on August 10.

While announcing the decisions of the monetary policy committee meeting, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said, “With the objective of harnessing the new technologies for enhancing digital payments experience for users it is proposed to enhance the transaction limit of small value digital payments in offline mode to Rs 500 from Rs 200 within the overall limit of Rs 2,000 per payment instrument. These initiatives will further deepen the reach of digital payments in the country.”

UPI Lite is an ‘on-device wallet’ feature that will allow users to make real-time small-value payments without using a UPI PIN.

RBI’s move of increasing the limit on UPI lite transaction will help travellers in carrying out digital transactions in remote areas where the data network is weak.

With the exponential growth of UPI, India became the world’s largest real-time payment market with 25.5 billion annual transactions surpassing China and the United States in 2020.

The biggest selling point for UPI internationally is that it could both accelerate and reduce the cost of cross-border transactions to and from India, the world’s top remittances market.

Also read: After Singapore, UPI payment link likely with UAE & Mauritius too