New Delhi, March 6 (IANS): National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Wednesday announced the signing of a multi-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, for conducting joint research on blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

The partnership will also propel further innovation through the establishment of the "NPCI-IISc Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Deep Tech Research & Development".

"This latest development marks an important step towards achieving that goal, and we take immense pride in collaborating with IISc," Vishal Kanvaty, CTO, NPCI, said in a statement.

"As our nation progresses towards digital sustainability, we recognise the significant potential for research in deep technologies such as blockchain and AI to further enhance the payment landscape," he added.

The partnership will also focus on scalable blockchain platforms and multi-modal analytics over fintech data. Faculty members from five departments at IISc will work with NPCI researchers on practical challenges related to these areas.

"This partnership will not only foster cutting-edge research and the development of models and software prototypes but also nurture professional development through workshops and training programmes," said Navakanta Bhat, Dean, Division of Interdisciplinary Sciences, IISc.

NPCI's collaboration with IISc is aimed at solving complex technological and engineering problem statements in the areas of scalability, privacy-preserving designs, neural networks, Graph AI, Large Language Models (LLM), etc.