India’s digital payments ecosystem is gearing up for its next leap, and artificial intelligence will be at the center of it. Dilip Asbe, MD and CEO of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which oversees the Unified Payment Interface (UPI), told TechCrunch that AI will drive the next wave of user growth, fraud prevention, and credit distribution.
UPI already handles over 750 million daily transactions, and the goal is to reach a billion. Asbe believes AI can help bring in the next half billion users through voice-based interfaces, multilingual onboarding, and smarter fraud detection.
“AI will be used very effectively when we look at the next wave of UPI, and that includes all aspects, including reaching new users,” Asbe said during Mumbai Tech Week 2026. NPCI, India’s central bank, and the government are working together on the initiative.
Voice interfaces remain early-stage — NPCI launched a voice assistant in 2023 with limited adoption — but Asbe sees potential once accuracy improves. On the agentic commerce front, NPCI demonstrated AI chatbot-led payments with Razorpay last year, though a wide rollout hasn’t happened yet.
Asbe stressed the need for robust regulations around AI-powered finance, ensuring user protection and risk mitigation. He also sees a big opportunity for Indian companies to build specialized small language models tailored to India’s rich payment data sets. Last year, NPCI launched FIMI, a model that resolves user disputes, now serving over a million users.
Meanwhile, NPCI’s plan to cap any single UPI app’s market share at 30% takes effect December 31, 2026. PhonePe and Google Pay currently control over 80% of the market. Asbe argued that switching costs are low and new apps can rise by finding viable business models within the fintech ecosystem.
Source: TechCrunch
