India Central Bank has proposed new AI-powered instant conversational payments in order to improve the overall digitalisation process in the region. Following this announcement, the Reserve Bank of India proposed a feature that is set to allow customers and clients to initiate and complete UPI payments through the use of artificial intelligence, aiming to make the service available in English and Hindi.

The UPI payments represent an instant peer-to-peer and peer-to-merchant transaction facility that is available on mobile devices. As the facility managed to achieve high market penetration in the region, the Reserve Bank of India aims to improve the overall customer experience by offering them safe and seamless payment methods. The new technology will enable users to leverage AI-powered systems to make payments in a secure and efficient environment.

The RBI also announced its plan to propose a feature that will give clients the possibility to converse with the artificial intelligence solution in order to initiate and complete a UPI payment. To begin the process of payment, the customer will need to pass voice commands to the AI in Hindi or English. For the future, the central bank aims to work towards the capability to enable conversations in multiple regional languages.

Reserve Bank of India’s strategy of development The financial institution had multiple partnerships and collaborations in the last couple of months, covering several geographic areas around the world. In April 2023, the Reserve Bank of India announced that it abandoned its plans for the high-profile project that was intended to rival the country’s dominant payment system, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). The RBI invited initially multiple bids in 2021 for licenses to operate the new retail payment and settlement systems across the region.

The project was entitled the New Umbrella Entity (also known as NUE) and it attracted significant interest from several major conglomerates, financial institutions, and tech companies, such as Amazon, Facebook, Tata Group, HDFC, and ICICI. Earlier in March 2023, the Reserve Bank of India offered its approval to CRIF Connect (a subsidiary of the credit bureau company CRIF) to operate as a Non-Banking Financial Company-Account Aggregator (NBDC-AA). Following this announcement, CRIF Connect became the seventh licensed AA that operated in India, including Yodlee Finsoft, NESL Asset Data, FinSec AA Solutions, CAMSFinServe, and Cookiejar Technologies, as well as Perfios Account Aggregation Services.

The AA network was introduces as a secure financial data-sharing system that facilitated credit and investment, a process that aimed to offer clients access and control and their financial records and to expand the overall potential pool of customers for financial sector entities and fintech enterprises. .