Mumbai: RBI governor Shaktikanta Das introduced several new features during the Monetary Policy Committee meeting on Thursday. These enhancements include AI-powered transactions, offline payments, and an increased limit in UPI Lite. These updates aim to make transactions more efficient and convenient.
NPCI intends to introduce ‘Conversational Payments’ on UPI, allowing users to interact with AI-powered systems to securely make payments. This feature will be compatible with both smartphones and feature phones, thereby contributing to the digital expansion in the country, according to Shaktikanta Das. Initially, it will be available in Hindi and English, with plans to subsequently include more Indian languages.
RBI has also suggested increasing the transaction limit for UPI Lite in offline mode from Rs 200 to Rs 500. This channel enables faster, more reliable, and contactless payments for small-value transactions and transit payments since it does not require two-factor authentication. However, to mitigate the risks associated with relaxing the two-factor authentication, the daily limit will be set at Rupees 2,000.
In a statement, Das said that there has been a growing demand to enhance these limits. To promote wider adoption of this method of payment and facilitate more use cases, it is now being proposed to raise the per transaction limit to Rs 500.
He also informed that offline payments via UPI will also be available soon with the use of NFC technology.
‘To promote the use of UPI-Lite, it is proposed to facilitate offline transactions using NFC technology. This feature will not only enable retail digital payments in situations where internet or telecom connectivity is weak or not available, but it will also ensure speed, with minimal transaction decline,’ the MPC statement said.
