UPI Meets ChatGPT in India’s Agentic Payments Pilot

Users can set spending limits once, then let an AI assistant complete purchases with fewer repeat checks.

MIT SMR Editors

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    • [Image source: Chetan Jha/MITSMR India]

    India has launched a pilot that lets people shop inside ChatGPT using the Unified Payments Interface, in a project led by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) with Razorpay and OpenAI.

    Axis Bank and Airtel Payments Bank are among the first banking partners and Bigbasket is an early merchant on the pilot.

    In a blog post, Razorpay said “Agentic Payments” uses UPI Circle and UPI Reserve Pay so users can pre-authorize an AI assistant to buy within set limits, reducing repeat checks.

    “This moves AI from helping you find products to helping you securely complete the entire purchase,” Razorpay said, noting that this would be “Indian digital landscape’s biggest shift since the launch of UPI.”

    Razorpay demoed flows such as browsing and paying at Bigbasket within chat and completing mobile recharges via Vi’s app-integrated assistant.

    ​The initiative will enable users to make purchases on ChatGPT. As of now, one can delegate product discovery to AI, not payment authority.

    Agentic Payments changes this entirely. By leveraging NPCI’s new capabilities, such as UPI Circle and UPI Reserve Pay, the system will enable users to securely pre-authorize their preferred AI agent to make purchases within pre-set, user-defined spending limits, thereby eliminating the need for constant human authentication.

    Notably, the UPI Reserve Pay will allow users to reserve funds for specific merchants.

    “With agentic payments, we are transforming AI assistants from simple discovery tools into full-fledged shopping agents,” said Harshil Mathur, CEO, Razorpay.
    The pilot was showcased at Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai, where authorities also flagged new digital-payments features, including on-device biometrics for UPI authorizations.

    NPCI data showed UPI crossed 20.01 billion transactions in August, up about 34% from a year earlier, underscoring the network’s scale.

    Meanwhile, Razorpay rival Cashfree also announced its own agentic, in-chat payments tools for merchants last week.

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