NPCI partners with Amazon to bring UPI support to Amazon Alexa: What this means for users?

UPI payments using Amazon Alexa: The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) today announced a new initiative that will enable UPI (United Payments Interface) users in India to make payments using Amazon Alexa. On the sidelines of the ongoing Global Fintech Fest 2023, NPCI announced that it has partnered with Amazon India for facilitating voice-based UPI transactions using the company’s AI-based voice assistant, Alexa.

With this, Amazon Echo Show device owners will be able to make UPI payments simply by asking Alexa to do so. With this voice-enabled digital payment service, users will be able to conveniently ask Alexa to transfer money directly from their bank account to that of their contacts. This peer-to-peer money transfer will take place entirely using voice commands to Alexa except for the part where users need to add their UPI PIN on their Amazon Echo Show smart displays.

As far as availability is concerned, this functionality is not available to Amazon Echo Show users just yet. However, they will get access to it soon. “During the event, NPCI in association with Amazon Alexa, showcased peer-to-peer money transfers with simple voice commands to Alexa Echo Show devices which will soon be available for its users…The solution is entirely voiced-based except for manually entering the UPI pin on the device screen,” NPCI wrote in a press release.

It is worth noting that this feature builds on top of an existing feature that will enable Alexa users in India to make bill payments using the company’s Amazon Pay payments service. This feature has been available in India since 2020.

NPCI brings more features for conversational payments using UPI

Notably, this Alexa’s support for UPI payments is not the only conversational payments feature that NPCI has introduced lately. Earlier this week, NPCI introduced Hello UPI functionality that will enable UPI users to make voice-enabled UPI payments via UPI Apps, telecom calls, and IoT devices in Hindi and English. NPCI has partnered with the Bhashini program to develop this feature and it will soon be available in more regional languages.

In addition to that, NPCI also announced BillPay Connect feature that will enable customers to fetch and pay their bills by sending a simple ‘Hi’ on the messaging app. Additionally, customers without smartphones or immediate mobile data access will be able to pay bills by giving a missed call. NPCI says that BillPay Connect will also offer Voice Assisted Bill Payments facility to the users.