Feature phone users can make UPI payment in regional languages like Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, and Bengali with ToneTag’s VoiceSE UPI payments. Sound wave tech solutions firm ToneTag has partnered with large PSU banks to provide UPI 123Pay services to their customers. In a statement, the company said that on the back of the recently launched UPI 123 Pay, ToneTag’s voice-first solution has expanded its offerings in regional languages in order to bridge the gap in the accessibility of digital payments in rural India.
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“Further to the roll out of VoiceSe UPI digital payments for feature phone users earlier this year, ToneTag is also enabling digital payments with just Voice in languages such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, and Bengali and soon to be available in Gujarati, Marathi, and Punjabi too,” the statement said.
In partnership with NSDL Payments Bank and NPCI, VoiceSe will allow 40 crore feature phone users to access the payment services in regional languages.
How to use
For making payments, a use can call the IVR number “6366 200 200” and proceed with their choice of financial transaction in their preferred language. With this payment service, users can not make fund transfers but also pay utility bills, do balance enquiries, and FASTag activation or recharge using only their voice – as easy as speaking to one’s mobile phone.
Voice market
The statement said that the global market for voice and speech recognition technology across sectors is estimated to grow to USD 28.1 billion by 2027; growing at a CAGR of 24.4% from 2022 to 2027. The current market size for voice technology is valued at USD 9.4 billion
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“We are looking at voice technology that goes beyond Siri and Alexa to enable digital payment solutions that aren’t necessarily dependent on 100% digital literacy or smartphone penetration,” Vivek Singh, Co-founder and Director Of Labs, ToneTag, was quoted as saying in the statement.
“Ever since its pilot project in several rural areas of India, such as across states like Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand, VoiceSe has witnessed instant success with the Indian population due to its simplicity of use and the fact that the user has to neither own a fancy, expensive smartphone nor be digitally literate to use the service. In less than two months of the launch, we have on-boarded over 1 lakh users on the platform and witnessed more than 2 lakh transactions,” he added.
