NEW DELHI: Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shatikanta Das on Thursday announced the launch of the ‘conversational payment’ option on UPI. While announcing the monetary policy committee decisions, Das proposed to enable “Conversational Payments” on UPI, which will enable users to engage in conversation with AI-powered systems to make payments.
According to an RBI statement, the facility will be made available in both smartphone and feature phones-based UPI channels, thereby helping in the deepening of digital penetration in the country. It will, initially, be available in Hindi and English and will subsequently be made available in more Indian languages. Instructions to NPCI will be issued shortly.
He also announced the introduction of offline payments on UPI using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology through the ‘UPI-Lite’ on-device wallet. The RBI governor also announced that the transaction limit for small-value digital payments in off-line mode will be enhanced from ₹200 to ₹500 within the overall limit of ₹2000 per payment instrument.
According to Das, this feature will not only enable retail digital payments in situations where internet/telecom connectivity is weak or not available, it will also ensure speed, with minimal transaction declines.
“These initiatives will further deepen the reach and use of digital payments in the country,” Das said in his Monetary Policy speech on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the governor also announced that the RBI is developing a digital Public Tech Platform. The platform is being developed by the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH).
According to the RBI Governor, the tech platform would enable the delivery of frictionless credit by facilitating the seamless flow of required digital information to lenders. The end-to-end digital platform will have an open architecture, open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and standards, to which all financial sector players can connect seamlessly in a ‘plug and play’ model.
The platform is intended to be rolled out as a pilot project in a calibrated fashion, both in terms of access to information providers and use cases. It shall bring about efficiency in the lending process in terms of reduction of costs, quicker disbursement, and scalability.