India, June 19 -- Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said conversational payments through artificial intelligence and offline functionality are being developed as a part of India's evolving digital financial ecosystem.

Speaking at the Digital Payments Award 2025, Sitharaman said that India now accounts for half of all real-time digital payments (48.5%) in the world and over 35 Cr users are part of the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) ecosystem.

"This is a direct outcome of citizen enthusiasm, participation from urban and rural populations for this openness to change and for making the effort to learn and adopt new technology," she added.

Conversational payments refers to a new payment mode, facilitating users to interact with an AI...