Syllabus: Science and Technology- developments and their applications and effects in everyday life.
Context
- In a move to make Unified Payments Interface (UPI) more user-friendly, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has proposed incorporating Artificial Intelligence-powered conversational features, to enable digital payments through voice commands.
- The RBI also announced plans to enhance the transaction limit for small-value digital payments in offline mode from ₹200 to ₹500 with the overall limit being retained at ₹2,000 per payment instrument to contain the risks associated with relaxation of two-factor authentication.
In Depth
- As AI is becoming increasingly integrated into the digital economy, conversational instructions hold immense potential in enhancing ease of use, and consequently reach, of the UPI system.
- It is, therefore, proposed to launch an innovative payment mode viz., ‘Conversational Payments’ on UPI,” RBI Governor Shakti Kanta Das announced on Thursday.
- It will enable users to engage in a conversation with an AI-powered system to “initiate and complete transactions in a safe and secure environment”.
- While payments through QR code are easy for everyone, the introduction of ‘Conversational Payments’ on UPI has the potential to take ease of payments to the next level.
- Those who find it difficult to navigate through a mobile application for making payments or want to save time will now be able to execute transactions with ease