Digital payments: Forum moots multilingual apps

At present, not all official languages are offered as ‘language options’ on Unified Payments Interface (UPI) applications.

The forum, which played a key role in developing interoperability and security standards for the Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) and UPI submitted these recommendations to the chairman of the RBI committee looking into the deepening of digital payments.

Highlighting the important aspects of the recommendations, forum chairman Gaurav Raina from the Department of Electrical Engineering, said, “The MPFI recommendations considered three broad perspectives for strengthening the digital payments space: user and merchant perspective; regulation, methods and processes; and standards for transactions, through channels like SMS.” He said the MPFI can help by creating videos in different languages to spread awareness, which can be used by all stakeholders.

Other key recommendations include focussing on increasing women consumers and using voice-based features in mobile apps. The positioning of mobile internet, especially towards payments, may need judicious advertising within the social and cultural context. Voice should play a key role, at least in the transaction part of the payment. This will enhance usability and reduce transaction time.

The forum also pointed out that for a certain fraction of Indians, the current e-commerce symbols may be confusing, which reduces their comfort levels to transact online. Simple and easy navigation and user interfaces that use speech rather than text could help.