India’s digital payment ecosystem continues to expand rapidly. The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) now processes over 750 million daily transactions, and the goal is to surpass one billion. Dilip Asbe, Managing Director and CEO of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which oversees UPI, believes artificial intelligence will play a central role in the next phase of growth—particularly in user acquisition, fraud prevention, and credit distribution.
Speaking with TechCrunch at Mumbai Tech Week (MTW) 2026 in February, Asbe explained that AI could help bring in the next half-billion users, with NPCI, the Reserve Bank of India, and the government collaborating closely.
“AI will be used very effectively when we look at the next wave of UPI, and that includes all aspects, including reaching new users. We must use AI effectively to protect our current citizens, to find fraud, and to find mules. AI must also be used to provide credit to all the users and merchants who have digital footprints. We must use AI to look at the voice and multilingual solutions to make onboarding simpler,” he said.
Voice as an interface is frequently cited as important for India, where many users interact with companies or systems by speaking. Asbe believes it is still early days, as voice models need to become more accurate. NPCI launched a voice assistant–based interactive system in 2023, but adoption has not yet taken off. Asbe noted that with the right use case, voice could become a critical component of the payments ecosystem.
AI in finance and regulations
In the United States, startups and public companies are racing to integrate AI into finance. Coinbase and Robinhood now allow agents to trade on users’ behalf, and OpenAI enables users to load personal account data into ChatGPT for financial advice. NPCI has demonstrated some agentic commerce and payment capabilities with Razorpay in 2025, but a wider rollout has not yet occurred.
Asbe believes that with robust regulations and a clear framework, India can also adopt AI-powered finance. He emphasized the need for strong user protection and risk mitigation. “In case something goes wrong, the system should be able to look at the instructions and consent given by the user to an agent,” he said.
Beyond using existing models, Asbe sees an opportunity for India’s financial ecosystem to build its own small language models. “We believe that the models will differentiate from each other based on the data sets that are made available to them. We have a very rich data set in our ecosystem. I think there is a big opportunity for Indian companies—the banks, FinTechs, and the ecosystem—to create small language models which are sharp, specific, and as deterministic as possible.”
In 2025, NPCI launched a model called FIMI, designed to resolve user disputes. Asbe noted that it already serves over a million users who cancel mandates and resolve issues, and it is scaling quickly.
UPI competition
NPCI has long pushed for healthy competition among UPI apps, but data shows that Walmart-owned PhonePe and Google Pay together hold over 80% of the market. The regulator’s plan to cap any single app’s market share at 30% is set to take effect on December 31, 2026, a move that could reshape the competitive landscape.
via TechCrunch