The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), at the Global Fintech Fest on Wednesday, has launched two conversational payments initiatives that are aimed at increasing convenience and accessibility for users.
'Hello UPI' allows users to make payments by engaging in conversations with their smartphones — whether it's splitting a restaurant bill, sending money to a friend, or settling utility bills.
In an official statement, the NPCI said, "The introduction of conversational UPI payments will augment user experience by enabling them to make voice-enabled UPI payments via UPI Apps, telecom calls, and IoT devices in Hindi and English, and will soon be available in several other regional languages."
The NPCI has partnered with the Bhashini programme, AI4Bharat at IIT Madras, to co-develop Hindi and English payment language models.
The NPCI also launched 'Bharat BillPay Connect', an initiative aimed at effortless bill payments through conversations. 'Bharat BillPay Connect' enables users to pay their bills through natural conversations with popular voice assistants like Alexa or via feature phones, smartphones, or merchant soundboxes. This initiative aims to cater to users across various tech proficiency levels, ensuring that digital bill payments are accessible to all.
"Customers can fetch and pay bills through voice commands on their smart home devices and get instant voice confirmation. Moreover, instant voice confirmations will be enabled for bill payments made at physical collection centers through payment soundbox devices," the NPCI stated.
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