Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) researchers will collaborate with members of the Mobile Payment Forum of India (MPFI) to develop voice-based solutions, especially in multiple vernacular languages for digital money transactions in the country.
This will provide a phenomenal platform not only for the increased adoption of digital payments in India but for research opportunities as well.
At present, there are more than 100 million active UPI users every month in India, as per the Government of India’s statistics.
Aim of MPFI’s initiative
These initiatives are being taken up by MPFI towards bringing 500 million active users onto the UPI payment platforms by 2025.
In the last Budget, the Government of India had allocated Rs 1,500 Crore to help drive the adoption of digital payments in the country.
MPFI’s steps towards achieving the goal
The MPFI is working to identify innovation across three levels; Human behavior and adoption, Technology (design and safeguards), and policy (a data-centric view), to propel India over the next decade.
Gaurav Raina, Faculty, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras, is the Chairman of MPFI, which is a joint initiative of the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology, Hyderabad and Rural Technology Business Incubator, IIT Madras. Taken up in 2006, the MPFI’s mission is to enable mobile payments and mobile financial services by everyone.
Elaborating about the importance of digital transactions during this pandemic period, Gaurav Raina, Faculty, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras, and Chairman, MPFI, said, “Digital and mobile payments, and in particular contactless payments, are important not just from an efficiency point of view, but also to mitigate risk against Covid-19.”
He also said, “It provides a great opportunity to help yourself and also the ecosystem.”
Gaurav Raina further added,
“This is the perfect time to build research collaborations to work towards solutions which will be cutting edge and will also be truly impactful, at scale, within India.”
He went on to say, “Such research-based solutions can help India lead the way globally in the delivery of mobile-based financial services.”
The role of IIT Madras will also be to provide thought leadership in driving digital payments in India to the next level.
Among the key technical areas in which IIT Madras researchers will be working will be machine learning and artificial intelligence, as applied to the digital payments space.
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