PhonePe reports significant efficiency gains through AI integration, reducing audit times from days to minutes and transforming internal operations, signalling a shift towards automation in scale.
PhonePe is using artificial intelligence to squeeze cost out of routine work and speed up internal processes, with its technology chief saying the gains are already visible across operations and software development.
At the company’s first “The CTO Summit 2026”, Srijon Biswas said AI has helped PhonePe cut the time needed for some audit checks from four days to just three minutes. He also said the fintech has saved about 22 person-days on each app release and reduced the cost of voice agents to roughly one-sixth of previous levels.
Biswas, who was elevated to chief technology officer in July, said the company now has more than 200 AI agents in use and that around 1,600 employees rely on them daily. That suggests AI has become embedded in PhonePe’s day-to-day workflows rather than being treated as an experimental side project.
The largest gains have come in back-office and developer operations. In some know-your-customer and onboarding processes, Biswas said the company has removed the need for human agents altogether, although affected staff were shifted to other roles rather than let go. He also said one workflow that once took two to three days, moving from product manager to designer to developer, can now be completed in about 10 minutes with automated code generation. Unit testing has been cut from about three days to half a day.
PhonePe is taking a more cautious approach to customer-facing AI. Biswas said the company is focused on a use case that lets customers ask questions about their transaction history in plain English, but it is moving deliberately because regulated fintech products need tighter controls. He said PhonePe built a layer to ensure AI systems follow the same role-based access rules as employees, reflecting the company’s need to keep automation within existing permissions.
The emphasis on governance comes as PhonePe expands beyond payments into broader financial services and consumer products. Business Standard reported in July that Biswas replaced co-founder Rahul Chari as CTO, while Chari took on the expanded role of chief product and technology officer. PhonePe, founded in 2016, now says it has more than 700 million registered users, underscoring the scale at which any efficiency gain can matter.
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