India’s National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), in partnership with fintech firm Razorpay and OpenAI, has launched a pilot program introducing AI-powered payments through ChatGPT, marking a new phase in the country’s digital finance evolution.
The initiative allows users to make purchases directly within ChatGPT using India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) network — a system that already handles more than 20 billion transactions monthly.
A Step Toward Agentic AI Commerce
The collaboration places India at the forefront of the “agentic AI” revolution, a term used to describe artificial intelligence models capable of executing complex tasks, including payments, with minimal human intervention. It also positions ChatGPT not just as a conversational tool, but as a transactional AI assistant capable of completing purchases autonomously and securely.
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According to Razorpay CEO Harshil Mathur, the introduction of agentic AI payments will transform the way users interact with digital assistants. “With agentic payments, we are transforming AI assistants from simple discovery tools into full-fledged shopping agents,” Mathur said.
Under the pilot phase, the companies aim to test how UPI credentials can be embedded within AI agents to autonomously execute transactions while maintaining user control, security, and transparency. The system leverages UPI’s newly introduced “reserve pay” feature, which lets users pre-authorize or reserve funds for selected merchants — an added layer of security designed for AI-driven transactions.
Banking and Retail Partners Onboard
The pilot program has the support of key financial partners, including Axis Bank and Airtel Payments Bank, which will handle the back-end transaction processing. Bigbasket, the e-commerce platform owned by the Tata Group, has been selected as one of the first retail partners, allowing customers to shop via ChatGPT using the integrated UPI system.
OpenAI’s managing director for international strategy, Oliver Jay, said the partnership highlights how AI and payments infrastructure can converge to make intelligent commerce seamless. “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,” Jay noted.
The initiative arrives at a time when several global tech firms are racing to incorporate AI-enabled payments into their ecosystems. Earlier this year, Alphabet’s Google and Perplexity AI launched similar services that allow users to make purchases directly within AI platforms.
However, India’s model stands out due to its integration with UPI, the country’s domestic payment network developed by NPCI, which has become one of the most successful digital payment systems globally. The government-backed infrastructure’s open and interoperable framework allows fintech firms to build innovations rapidly at scale — a key reason India has become a global hub for real-time payments and financial technology.
The partnership also intensifies competition among local fintech players. Cashfree, one of Razorpay’s chief rivals, announced on Thursday that it had rolled out its own agentic AI payments system for merchants, suggesting that AI-driven commerce could soon become mainstream across India’s digital economy.
NPCI and Razorpay said the ongoing pilot will evaluate how the service can be expanded across sectors, including retail, travel, and digital services, while ensuring privacy compliance and maintaining user consent in every transaction.
The Road to the ‘Everything App’
The integration of payments within ChatGPT adds to a growing list of recent initiatives that show OpenAI’s widening reach into areas traditionally dominated by Google, Apple, and Meta. As the days go by, OpenAI continues to unlock new frontiers, expanding ChatGPT’s capabilities far beyond its origins as a text-based assistant. From writing and reasoning to searching and now transacting, the AI system is gradually being woven into the digital fabric of daily life. In recent months, OpenAI has launched a search tool, introduced a web browser, and hinted at future social integration features.
This transformation reflects a broader vision by OpenAI’s leadership — one in which ChatGPT becomes not just a tool but a platform for living, working, and now, buying. Its trajectory mirrors that of super-apps in Asia that integrate messaging, payments, and commerce, but with a distinctly AI-driven approach that learns, anticipates, and acts on behalf of users.
If successful, the integration could redefine how users interact with AI systems, merging conversational AI with real-time payment capability. ChatGPT would no longer simply recommend products or summarize information — it would be able to purchase items, pay bills, and manage transactions directly, turning generative AI into an active participant in financial ecosystems.