The RBI and the Government have been continuously encouraging the digital payment sector to ensure that the benefits of #digitalbanking reach every nook and corner of the country in a consumer-friendly manner. The Fintechs among others have been leveraging technology and innovation to make this happen. As far as the payments space (payments for goods and services) is concerned, AI has primarily been deployed in transactions monitoring engines (for fraud), automating workflows and processes, chatbots for customer service and to some extent KYC processes. There have been instances of AI deployment in stores such as Amazon Go but that has been on a smallish scale and not necessarily deployed across the board, but it is a potential forerunner of things to come. However, the real leap in the application of AI in the field of payments will come when it starts making fully autonomous choices on behalf of buyers of goods and services. It is already happening in a small way with IOT devices. A white paper by Worldline -The IOT Payment Revolution, highlights how this is set to grow in a large way in the coming years across multiple years. The paper shows how the confluence is constantly improving AI, independent rise in people preferring to pay digitally and the increase of IOT enabled devices is leading to the rise of autonomous payments. Why IOT devices? They are going to be what really push consumer digital payments onto a different plane. Why AI? AI is going to be making decisions on behalf of the buyer albeit in a safe and secure manner.

AI along with blockchain are going to be the key technology enablers for IOT payments. IoT devices collect large amounts of data that can fuel AI machine learning algorithms and neural network systems to predict consumer behavior. Extensive training on user behavior and the transactional context is needed to effectively implement the capability to execute truly autonomous payments on behalf of and with the full confidence of a h.