In a move that signals the growing role of conversational AI in fintech operations, PayU has introduced an AI-powered outbound voice call assistant aimed at transforming how merchants are onboarded onto its platform.
Merchant onboarding in the payments ecosystem has long been a friction-heavy process—marked by paperwork, KYC bottlenecks, and multiple verification layers. The result is often delayed activations and a high rate of drop-offs, especially among small and mid-sized businesses.
PayU’s new voice assistant seeks to address this gap by shifting onboarding from a passive, form-led journey to a proactive, conversation-driven experience.
The AI agent reaches out to merchant leads—particularly those who haven’t initiated onboarding—and engages them in natural conversations in English and Hindi. It collects key business details such as website information, expected revenue, and category, while guiding users through the onboarding flow. The system is also designed to qualify leads in real time and route them to the right account managers when human intervention is needed.
This blend of automation and assisted onboarding is expected to not only speed up verification cycles but also improve conversion rates by reducing friction at early stages of the merchant journey.
“Voice AI is becoming a core driver of how businesses operate and grow,” said Manas Mishra, Chief Product Officer, PayU and Wibmo. “We are building towards an AI-native platform where we remove friction across the merchant lifecycle—from onboarding to activation—while enabling our teams to focus on high-value engagement.”
The rollout is part of PayU’s broader strategy to embed AI across the merchant lifecycle. The company plans to extend voice AI capabilities into areas such as KYC drop-off recovery, activation workflows, cross-sell opportunities, and new product adoption. There are also plans to expand language support to cater to a more diverse merchant base across India.
With over 4.5 lakh businesses on its platform and support for more than 100 payment methods, PayU’s move underscores a wider industry shift—where voice interfaces are evolving from customer support tools into core operational engines.
As fintech players compete on experience as much as infrastructure, conversational AI may well become the new front line of merchant engagement.