Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das, during the Global Fintech Fest 2023 recently, launched another set of new digital offerings like Credit Line on UPI, UPI LITE X, and Tap & Pay, Hello! UPI - Conversational Payments on UPI, BillPay Connect - Conversational Bill Payments. These features will allow people to use UPI in different forms to make payments process easier. Here’s an explainer on these offerings, which are aimed at transforming the online payments industry in India.

Hello! UPI

Conversational UPI payments and conversational bill payments are facilitated by an AI-enabled system, which is expected to deepen digital payments usage in the country. Users can simply give voice commands to transfer funds and input a UPI PIN to complete the transaction. NPCI has partnered with the Bhashini program – AI4Bharat at IIT Madras, to co-develop Hindi and English payment language models. Hello! UPI or "conversational payments" on UPI will enable people 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 expansion will broaden payment accessibility for most Indians who are fluent in native languages.

BillPay Connect

For bill payments via UPI, with the BillPay Connect or "conversational bill payments" feature, people can fetch and pay their bills by sending a simple ‘Hi’ on the messaging app. Customers, without smartphones or immediate mobile data access, will also be able to pay bills by giving a missed call. Customers will receive an immediate call back for verification and payment authorisation. The feature also offers a 'Voice Assisted Bill Payments' facility. Customers can fetch and pay bills through voice commands on their smart home devices and get instant voice confirmation.

New UPI features

Hello UPI! These new features to make online payments easier