India’s National Payments Corporation (NPCI) has partnered with fintech company Razorpay and OpenAI to introduce a pilot programme for AI-driven payments on ChatGPT, dubbed Agentic AI payments.
Agentic AI payments allows users to make purchases directly through ChatGPT, using India’s domestic payments network, unified payments interface (UPI).
The pilot follows leading AI companies, including Alphabet’s Google and Perplexity AI, launching their versions of AI-enabled payment services earlier this year, reported Reuters.
Agentic AI works on AI models that require minimal human intervention to complete tasks and enable users to complete transactions without leaving the AI platforms.
The pilot aims to explore how this service can be extended across various sectors and assess the feasibility of enabling AI agents to perform transactions autonomously while maintaining user security and control.
The Agentic AI payments system leverages UPI’s recently introduced ‘reserve pay’ feature, which permits users to allocate funds for specific merchants.
UPI currently processes over 20 billion transactions monthly, establishing it as a key player in India’s fast payments landscape.
The pilot involves banking partnerships with Axis Bank and Airtel Payments Bank.
Tata Group’s e-commerce platform Bigbasket is among the first to integrate this capability for customers using ChatGPT.
Bigbasket head Preeti Jain said: “With Agentic Payments, we’re enabling effortless shopping through AI assistants.
“From discovery to checkout, bigbasket and Razorpay integration delivers a fast, seamless grocery shopping experience, all in one conversation.”
Razorpay highlighted the limitations of traditional payment processes in an AI-driven environment, where human authentication can interrupt the transaction flow.
The integration of UPI Circle and UPI Reserve Pay aims to streamline this by allowing users to pre-authorise their AI agents to make purchases within predefined spending limits, thereby reducing the necessity for ongoing human verification.
Razorpay showcased the technology’s potential at the Global Fintech Fest and demonstrated scenarios where users could shop on Bigbasket and recharge mobile plans using the Vodafone Idea (Vi) App through conversational AI.
The collaboration between OpenAI, NPCI, and Razorpay aims to establish a secure and compliant framework, with significant support from major banks.
This private beta represents an initial step, as the partners plan to further develop the project into full production over the coming months.
Razorpay CEO Harshil Mathur said: “With agentic payments, we are transforming AI assistants from simple discovery tools into full-fledged shopping agents.”
OpenAI international strategy managing director Oliver Jay said: “We’re excited to work with NPCI and explore how we can combine advanced AI with UPI, one of the world’s most trusted real-time payment networks.”
Recently, India has introduced three new unified payments interface (UPI) digital features at the Global Fintech Festival 2025.
UPI with On-Device Biometric Authentication allows users to confirm UPI transactions using their smartphone’s biometric capabilities, such as fingerprint scanning or facial recognition.
