PhonePe on Monday announced the launch of a first-of-its-kind celebrity voice feature on its SmartSpeakers in collaboration with the iconic Indian actor, Amitabh Bachchan. This new feature will allow PhonePe SmartSpeakers across India to validate customer payments in Bachchan’s distinct voice. This industry-first celebrity voice feature is currently available in Hindi and English, with plans to roll this out for other languages in the future, PhonePe said in a statement.

The PhonePe SmartSpeaker was launched a year ago, and since then, four million devices are being used by merchant partners across 19,000 postal codes (covering over 90 percent of the country), PhonePe said.

Speaking about the new feature, Vivek Lohcheb, Head of Offline Business at PhonePe said, “Being a popular Indian app used by one in four Indians, we believe this collaboration will further elevate the popularity of the PhonePe SmartSpeaker for merchants and customers alike.”

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how merchants can enable this new feature from their PhonePe for Business app.

Step 1:

Open the PhonePe for Business App

Step 2: Go to the SmartSpeaker section on the home screen

Step 3: Under ‘My SmartSpeaker’, click on ‘SmartSpeaker Voice’

Step 4: Choose Amitabh Bachchan’s voice in the preferred language

Step 5: Click on ‘Confirm’ to activate the voice

Step 6: Device gets rebooted with the updated language in Bachchan’s voice within a few hours

Earlier merchants using feature phones relied heavily on SMS, but now with the PhonePe SmartSpeakers, their payment validation experience has been significantly eased. PhonePe SmartSpeakers provide voice payment notifications in multiple Indian languages, with up to 4 days of battery life, dedicated data connectivity, a dedicated battery level LED indicator for ease of use, audio alerts for low battery levels, and a dedicated replay button for the last transaction, the digital payment platform said.

(Edited by : Anshul)

First Published:Sept 4, 2023 12:03 PM IST