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NPCI & SBI Payments partner to launch RuPay SoftPoS
NEW DELHI: National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has partnered with SBI Payments to announce the launch of RuPay SoftPoS for millions of Indian merchants. This innovative solution has the capability to transform NFC enabled smartphones into merchant point of sale (PoS) terminals for the retailers. Merchants will now be able to accept contactless payments of up to Rs 5,000 through a simple tap and pay mechanism on their smartphones.
RuPay SoftPoS will provide cost effective acceptance infrastructure to retailers at nominal cost. This unique phenomenon would be able to proliferate digital payment acceptance among millions of underserved Indian MSMEs. Merchants can convert their existing android smartphone devices into a payment terminal by simply downloading a supported app. This solution will revolutionise the way micro and small merchants receive payments and create a demarcated shift in their tendency to deal in cash to accepting secure, contactless digital payments instead.
The RuPay SoftPoS is convenient and creates a superior transaction experience. Once the contactless menu is chosen, an appropriate amount is entered (< Rs 5000). The RuPay card can then be tapped on the merchant’s mobile making these transactions instantaneously. As soon as the transaction is approved, the receipt of successful transaction is generated real time. This facility can be used on NCMC cards and RuPay tokenised card on mobile/ wearable to make payments in a secure and time efficient manner. The RuPay SoftPoS solution benefits the merchants and customers alike – it creates a smart and user-friendly acceptance infrastructure for merchants; whereas encourages the customers to make secure, contactless payments.
Giri Kumar Nair, MD & CEO SBI Payments said, “SBI Payments is working closely with NPCI to support the government’s Digital India initiative enabling small and medium merchants in semi urban and rural centres. We are also enabling NCMC cards on our terminals to improve consumer experience and the RBI announcement allowing up to Rs 5000 transaction through tap and go facility has further enhanced our ability to reach out to a wider number of merchant categories. There is also a special focus on north-eastern states onboarding merchants on asset light model enabling QR and tap on phone form factors.
NPCI COO Praveena Rai said, “We are delighted to partner with SBI to launch the RuPay SoftPoS solution aimed at creating an innovative payment solution for Indian MSMEs which forms the backbone of our economy. It is our endeavour to ensure that merchants from various geographies of the nation are onboarded into the ecosystem in order to deepen the penetration of digital acceptance infrastructure in the country. It is our belief that this is a step in the right direction of financial inclusivity as RuPay SoftPoS can provide an impetus to the digital on-boarding of merchants across the length and breadth of the country."
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AI could replace half of entry-level white-collar work: Anthropic study
Hiring in AI-exposed occupations fell 14 per cent post-ChatGPT
SAN FRANCISCO: From lamplighters to elevator operators, waves of technology have repeatedly erased once-common jobs. Now artificial intelligence may be poised to do the same for large swathes of professional work.
A new study by Anthropic suggests that while AI tools are technically capable of performing many knowledge-economy tasks, real-world adoption lags far behind that potential, at least for now.
The report, Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence, by Maxim Massenkoff and Peter McCrory, introduces a new metric called “observed exposure,” which compares what AI systems could theoretically perform with what they are actually doing in workplaces.
Using professional interaction data from Anthropic’s Claude model, the researchers found that AI could theoretically cover a wide share of tasks in business, finance, management, computing, mathematics, legal services and office administration. Yet current adoption represents only a small fraction of those capabilities.
That gap between potential and reality reflects a mix of legal barriers, technical limitations and the continued need for human oversight, the study said. But the authors suggest those constraints may prove temporary as the technology matures.
Warnings about AI’s impact on white-collar employment have been growing. CEO Dario Amodei has previously argued that AI could disrupt as much as half of entry-level professional work, while Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman has suggested that most professional tasks could eventually be automated within 12 to 18 months.
Highly educated workers most exposed
Contrary to common assumptions, the study finds that workers most exposed to AI are not those in manual labour but highly educated professionals. The most exposed group is 16 percentage points more likely to be female, earns on average 47 per cent more than the least exposed group and is nearly four times as likely to hold a graduate degree.
Occupations including computer programmers, customer service representatives and data entry clerks are among the most vulnerable to automation.
Yet even in highly exposed fields, AI is not yet replacing jobs at scale. The researchers cite routine medical tasks, such as authorising prescription refills, as examples that AI could technically perform but is not widely observed doing in practice.
In the report’s visual framework, actual AI usage (the “red area”) remains far smaller than the theoretical “blue area” of possible tasks. Over time, the researchers expect the red area to expand as adoption deepens.
At the other end of the labour market, roughly 30 per cent of occupations show virtually no AI exposure. Roles such as cooks, mechanics, bartenders and dishwashers still depend heavily on physical presence and manual work that large language models cannot replicate.
Hiring slowdown rather than layoffs
So far the clearest labour-market signal is not mass layoffs but a slowdown in hiring within AI-exposed occupations.
According to the study, job-finding rates in those sectors have fallen about 14 per cent since the arrival of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT compared with 2022 levels. A separate study cited by the authors found a 16 per cent drop in employment among workers aged 22 to 25 in AI-exposed roles.
Recent labour data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics also point to softer hiring conditions, with employers shedding 92,000 jobs in February and unemployment rising to 4.4 per cent.
Some companies have already linked layoffs to automation. Jack Dorsey said his payments firm Block recently cut nearly half its workforce in part because AI tools allow smaller teams to operate more efficiently.
Not everyone is convinced the technology is solely responsible. Critics such as Marc Benioff have accused some firms of “AI washing”, using automation as a convenient explanation for cost-cutting measures.
Still, the researchers warn that the longer-term risk is a potential “white-collar recession”. If unemployment in the most AI-exposed occupations were to double, from about 3 per cent to 6 per cent, it would mirror the scale of labour-market disruption seen during the Global Financial Crisis.
For now, the shift may simply mean fewer entry-level openings. Some young workers are staying longer in existing roles, switching sectors or returning to education rather than entering AI-exposed fields.
