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IVR Payments

By C Chaitanya
Rant start:

Have been seeing and hearing a lot about digital payments in India and how it will make us the best country in the world and how it will solve all our problems.

And the path chosen by our tech brethren to move payments in India along the digital path is through apps. Because you know, apps are sexy. Apps are the in thing. Apps are the next best thing since sliced bread. Apps allow you to track the customers. Profile them. Make money out of them.

Only problem, majority of India does not have a smartphone and those who have, do not want to install too many apps.

The funny thing is, if you really want to enable consumers to transact digitally, there is a ready made channel available. It does not even need an Internet connection. It does not even need a user to be literate. Its the lowly voice channel on the telco networks. And on that channel we can build the original apps, also known as IVRs.

But IVRs are not sexy. They just get the job done. And marketing teams hate IVRs. They are so old school.

We have worked with HUL in building the biggest IVR based content system(KKT) with 50 million users. Callers can select bollywood songs, like or dislike them, skip some songs etc. All on an IVR. Most of the consumers are from rural areas.

Rural people want choice. Rural people want to use new things. They want to go digital. But on their terms. Not what we think they want. And I am sure they dont want apps now.

And if they are able to select bollywood content from an IVR,I am sure, its not that hard to help them make and receive payments too.

Rant End:
p.s: I know I know, security and other things. Will cover in other posts. Suffice to say that we can provide the current level of security in IVRs too.
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