New Delhi, Sep 19 (IANS): HDFC Bank's Facebook Messenger chatbot "OnChat" has registered a 160 per cent month-on-month growth in transactions, the company said on Tuesday.

"We are excited by the response HDFC Bank's 'OnChat' has received. The idea behind 'OnChat' is to allow customers to conduct transactions while they chat with friends on Messenger, thereby taking the user experience in the conversational banking space to the next level," said Nitin Chugh, Country Head - Digital Banking, HDFC Bank, in a statement.

"OnChat" has witnessed an exponential growth in the number of users and has received over 2.4 million messages.

"Number of returning users were close to 34 per cent that further bolsters the confidence in conversational banking," HDFC Bank said.

The service witnessed nearly 25 per cent usage by non-HDFC bank users as well, who used the bot to transact and use services.

The chatbot was launched in collaboration with Niki.ai, on Facebook Messenger platform in December 2016. It marked the bank's maiden foray into conversational banking.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based chatbot 'Eva' -- built for HDFC Bank by Bengaluru-based Senseforth AI Research -- has also successfully addressed over 2.7 million customer queries in six months to become the country's largest banking chatbot, the bank said earlier this month.