Soon, a payments bank will speak your language too

Not knowing English, the language in which mobile telephony and the internet were designed and evolved grounds-up, may lead to being victims of online frauds and cyber crimes — a major reason why many smartphone users are rather apprehensive, even post demonetisation, of using e-wallets or digital financial transactions and still queue in front of ATMs and banks.

It is under these circumstances that Bengaluru-based Reverie Language Technologies is planning to go live with its first payments bank, with its entire transactions in local languages, by March 2017.

“We will go live with full-fledged transactions of the first payment bank in an Indian language by February-March next year,” Arvind Pani, co-founder and CEO, Reverie Language Technologies, told BusinessLine . However, he declined to name the bank at this stage. The RBI has granted licence to 12 payments banks, which are expected to start functioning next year.

“We are also in advanced talks with 3-4 e-wallet companies to provide them our Cloud-based Language-as-a-Solution (LaaS) platform that will enable them to go multilingual,” said Vijayananda Prabhu, Vice-President - Client Engagement, Reverie Language. An estimated 1 million new e-wallet users are joining the bandwagon every day and nearly 30 e-wallet companies are vying for new customers through an advertising blitz.

At present, e-wallets such as Mobikwik and Paytm offer partial content in local languages as transaction details are still in English. ICICI Bank, which developed India’s first “digital village” at Akodara in Gujarat, had also developed content for SMS-based financial transaction in Gujarati.

In May 2015, Reverie Language Gateway powered India’s first multilingual securities app launched by HDFC Securities, and also the country’s first comprehensive multilingual weather channel.

Pani pointed out that the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution recognises 22 languages, of which 12 are predominant and used by nearly 85 per cent people. On the other hand, only 4-5 per cent people use English fluently as a medium. Since the internet and mobile telephony predominantly use English in most countries, customers unfamiliar with this language, but willing to make financial transaction through digital media, are apprehended by frauds. That is why these transactions are done in local languages in countries such as China and Japan.

India currently has nearly 40 crore smartphone users, including about 24 crore unbanked people. With the disruption brought in by demonetisation, many people are being pushed into digital transaction and the “less-cash” economy, and they could embrace it if they could do it in their own language, Pani said.

COMMENT NOW