AI is increasingly transforming India’s financial services, from multilingual voice-to-text in lending to record-breaking digital payment volumes, reshaping customer engagement and operational efficiency while navigating security challenges.
A small dairy farmer in semi-urban Andhra Pradesh may not think of artificial intelligence as a lending breakthrough, yet that is where the technology is starting to matter. Niwas Housing Finance is using multilingual voice-to-text tools to capture customer conversations in the borrower’s preferred language, a move that can make a home-loan application feel less like a bureaucratic hurdle and more like a conversation. LiveMint reported that this is part of a wider shift in financial services, where AI is moving beyond chat-style responses into systems that can interpret requests, coordinate tasks and act across workflows.
That shift is taking place against the backdrop of a payments system already operating at enormous scale. According to LiveMint, the Unified Payments Interface processed 23.65 billion transactions worth ₹29.87 lakh crore in July 2026, with more than 741 banks live on the platform. Business Standard separately reported that the number of banks on UPI had risen nearly fivefold from 155 in June 2020 to 731 in June 2026, while the platform handled 22.71 billion transactions that June. Newsbytes added that July’s volume set a fresh record, with 23.66 billion transactions and an average of 763 million payments a day. Taken together, the figures show how deeply digital finance has been embedded in everyday life, creating the conditions for AI to move from the edges of customer service into the core of banking and investment operations.
Industry executives speaking on LiveMint’s All About AI podcast described that change in practical terms. Sonali Kalyanikar, vice-president of sales at Salesforce India, said the focus had shifted from simple automation to speed and task completion, arguing that agentic AI can allow one system to speak directly to another, including bank and NBFC systems. At Niwas Housing Finance, chief executive Shreejit Menon said the challenge is not only to serve borrowers with limited paperwork, but also to preserve empathy and human contact in the lending process. That balance matters as financial inclusion widens: the Reserve Bank of India’s Financial Inclusion Index rose to 70.0 in March 2026 from 67.0 a year earlier, according to the figures cited by LiveMint.
At Godrej Capital, chief technology officer Jyothirlatha B said AI agents are beginning to take over document-heavy underwriting work by reading files and pre-filling fields, leaving people to focus on judgement rather than data entry. But she also warned that security remains a major constraint because the technology is changing faster than many firms’ guardrails. Kalyanikar put the risk bluntly, saying firms cannot afford to “hallucinate” when money is involved. Vijay Rao, head of IT at Mirae Asset Investment Managers, said his firm has set up a dedicated AI function and is using agents across its data infrastructure, but added that security comes before innovation.
The larger promise, executives said, is not simply faster processing but clearer financial communication. Rao said AI could help explain complex products in simpler language, while LiveMint noted that Singh posed the question of whether AI could explain finance “like I’m a 4-year-old”. Beneath the humour was a serious point: borrowers and investors do not need more jargon, they need systems that are easier to understand and trust. If AI can help a farmer speak to a lender in his own language, reduce paperwork for underwriters and give investment professionals more time for judgement, it may prove most valuable not as a replacement for people, but as a way to make finance more usable.
Disclaimer: This article is intended to inform and educate, not to recommend or endorse any financial product, investment or strategy. Please consider your own financial circumstances and seek professional advice where appropriate before making financial decisions.
