Almost every Indian has heard of PhonePe and most of us even have it installed on our smartphones. Founded in 2015 by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer, the digital wallet platform is available in 11 different Indian languages. It took the Indian market by storm by allowing merchants and vendors to accept UPI payments by scanning the QR code. The hassle of making change disappeared almost instantly. Right from the vegetable vendor to the taxi driver, everyone adopted PhonePe, making it extremely convenient for the common man. A seamless and secure online payment system that is India’s largest digital payment platform, PhonePe has over 300 million users. Backed by Flipkart, the valuation of PhonePe is estimated to be $7billion, making it the 2nd largest unicorn after Paytm. This kind of mammoth business needed to adopt smart technology to ensure the highest level of user experience and customer satisfaction. PhonePe made a couple of smart moves with AI and ML.
Freddy Bot
The Indian customer didn’t warm up to online financial translation for quite a while. There was always the fear of the phone getting corrupt, credit card details getting stolen or bank accounts getting hacked. It needed to be handled sensitively for people, especially the merchants, to trust and adopt it. To gain the trust of the customers, PhonePe approached Freshdesk, a customer service platform, to provide a solution. They invested in Freddy bot, a chatbot that now solves 80% of the customer queries that come online, without any human interference. This bot will answer all kinds of queries like balance information, login issues, payment process, etc. The traditional channels like SMS and email along with a live-chat option are still available, but by integrating the ERP systems with Freddy bot, PhonePe managed to automate over 850 decision items. With PhonePe services constantly increasing and improving, the bot also has an agent-assist feature that assists agents with the new services and customer management. Because of this bot, the platform is able to assist thousands of customers everyday as compared to only a small percentage of them being assisted if the process was manual.
Machine Learning
The data science team uses ML flow, Spark and Apache. A combination of technologies and algorithms is used for different aspects of the product. For bill payments, a combination of ML solutions is used to pull out the bill and due date details and set reminders for customers. This algorithm will also help customers with beneficial recommendations on their spending, cost-saving tips, and avoiding late payment fees. “Several transactions were getting blocked during the month end due to casualties in the pattern of past transactions led by unrecognised spikes generated in the system. So, after this observation we have updated our ML and Risk-in-line system with self-learning capabilities towards such casual spikes to be accountable for every context of the transaction.”, says Rahul Chari, CTO and Co-founder, PhonePe. The ML solution helps analyse user behavior, which, in turn, helps recommend the next best action to the user. The next-best-action section is personalised for users after analysing their buying habits and filters used. There are even personalised offers using CRM that have helped in higher conversions. “Having one of the best analytics teams, we have a major focus on data-driven decision making. Additionally, our data science teams are investing in various models that are powering our risk and fraud detection system, promotions platform and CRM. We believe that users have a personalised experience and they must not be presented with a lot of information and data intelligence plays a key role in ensuring this.”, says Chari.
Enhanced Customer Experience with AI
Going a step ahead in customer experience and convenience, PhonePe has partnerships with other e-wallet platforms, including Airtel Money, JioMoney, and Freecharge. Customers can link their existing e-wallets with PhonePe. The company has also integrated popular apps like RedBus, Myntra, Ola, and GoIbibo, among others on its platform. The best part is that these apps are deployed on PhonePe Switch, where users can use a unified account to access them. The platform has always been innovative and creative with the features and services offered. A Bluetooth-enabled POS device was launched by PhonePe that enables payments through all devices that can access the app. The send/receive money page now has a message feature too. Another innovative move was the PhonePe ATM that allows general stores to dispense money to customers in real-time. “At PhonePe, when we build something, we don’t build it as just a feature. We look at the core capabilities that can power a particular feature and how we can build it in a more generic manner, allowing it to unlock even more value in the future.”, says Rahul Chari, CTO, PhonePe. The user experience offered by PhonePe keeps getting better because of the AI, ML, and other new-age technologies constantly being explored by the data science team. It’s what has made the platform the go-to app for merchants across the country.
Source: indiaai.gov.in
