Researchers of Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) & members of Mobile Payment Forum of India (MPFI) are set to work together for boosting digital money transactions in India.
- The two entities will develop voice-based solutions, especially in multiple vernacular languages to enable larger adoption of digital money transactions in India.
- As part of the collaboration, IIT Madras will work on key technical areas like Machine Learning (ML) & Artificial Intelligence (AI), applied to the digital payments space.
- The collaboration is part of MPFI’s efforts to achieve 500 million active Unified Payments Interface (UPI) users in India by 2025. At present, there are more than 100 million active UPI users every month in India.
- Union Government in its budget for the FY 2021-22 has allocated INR 1, 500 Crore for increasing the adoption of digital payments.
Key Points
i.The collaboration between IIT Madras and MPFI will serve as a platform for research opportunities as well.
ii.As part of the collaboration, IIT Madras will also provide thought leadership to drive digital payments in India to the next level.
iii.MPFI is working to identify innovation in UPI across three levels – Human behaviour and adoption, Technology (design and safeguards), and Policy (a data-centric view).
- It has recommended the government allocated funds to be used for educating users on mobile payment, and for developing a multilingual ecosystem for payments.
iv.By Analysing the UPI Transactions, Government can develop a data-centric understanding of economy’s behaviour and money flow patterns, which can be used to plan taxes.
v.The digital transaction through BHIM UPI (Bharat Interface for Money) in April, 2021 fell by 2.2% to INR 4.94 Lakh Crore (from INR 5.05 Lakh Crore in March, 2021).
- The total transaction also stood at 2.64 Billion in April, 2021 (down by 3.3%) from 2.73 Billion in March, 2021.
Mobile Payment Forum of India (MPFI)
- It is a Joint initiative of the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT), Hyderabad and Rural Technology Business Incubator (RTBI), IIT Madras.
- It played a key role in developing interoperability and security standards for Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), and UPI.
Recent Related News:
i.On January 1, 2021, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) introduced the RBI-Digital Payments Index (DPI) to measure a growth in digital or cashless transactions across the country.
About Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras)
Director – Bhaskar Ramamurthi
Location – Chennai, Tamil Nadu
About Mobile Payment Forum of India (MPFI)
Chairman – Dr Gaurav Raina
