India has launched a pilot project to let consumers make purchases and payments directly through AI chatbots, with OpenAI’s ChatGPT leading the rollout and integrations with Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Cloud in development, as the South Asian nation becomes the next major market for global AI companies.
On Thursday, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the federal body behind the country’s widely used Unified Payments Interface (UPI), partnered with OpenAI and fintech firm Razorpay to enable consumers to make purchases and make payments directly through ChatGPAT. Razorpay confirmed to TechCrunch that the pilot is being rolled out nationwide and will become widely available in the coming months.
experience is created UPI Reserve Pay – A new NPCI protocol that allows users to block a specific amount for future debits to designated merchants – and UPI CircleA solution that delegates UPI authentication, enabling payments to be completed directly within ChatGPT without switching to external apps or websites. Razorpay has developed a merchant integration layer that allows businesses to conduct transactions through AI chatbots.
Tata Group-owned online grocery company BigBasket and telecom operator Vi are the initial merchant partners for the new pilot, which allows customers to buy groceries or purchase mobile recharge plans directly through ChatGPAT. Additionally, Axis Bank and Airtel Payments Bank are powering the banking layer.
India, the world’s most populous country and home to more than a billion Internet subscribers, is already one of OpenAI’s top markets for ChatGPT. OpenAI is trying to expand its presence in the country, and launched a ChatGPAT Go plan priced under $5 in August to attract more customers. The commerce pilot is part of its broader effort to deepen engagement and leverage India’s rapidly growing digital economy.
“It’s not just a payments experience,” Harshil Mathur, Razorpay co-founder and CEO, said in an interview. “This is a whole new discovery and commerce experience.”
UPI is already a huge success in India, enabling over 20 billion transactions every month and serving as the country’s leading digital payments channel. Still, if consumers adopt chatbots as a new interface for shopping, the new AI-based experience could help NPCI move forward by incorporating UPI into everyday commerce.
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The company has also completed proof-of-concept for the new agentic payments experience with Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s cloud, Mathur told TechCrunch. These integrations will go live for consumers in a matter of weeks, he said.
Mathur said Razorpay is also in talks with other merchants besides BigBasket and Vi and is hoping for a wider rollout in the next few months.
Like OpenAI, both Google and Anthropic are seeing growth in new users from India. While Google already has a deep local presence – with mass-market products like Android, Search and YouTube – OpenAI and Anthropic are now taking steps to establish a footprint in the country as they work to localize their AI offerings for Indian users.
India’s current scheme with agent payments does not involve any specific revenue-sharing model for the participating partners. However, the move will help AI companies including OpenAI achieve greater user retention.
Mathur confirmed to TechCrunch that under the new setup AI companies will not get access to payment data, and users will pre-authorize the amount transacted through the chatbot through two-factor authentication.
Last month, OpenAI introduced an “Instant Checkout” experience and its agent commerce protocol developed in partnership with Stripe to help businesses and merchants connect with consumers using AI agents. Similarly Google also launched it Agent Payment Protocol Enabling AI agents to conduct transactions on behalf of users.
“It’s still an early, forward-looking concept, but it has tremendous potential. Adoption will naturally grow in line with how fast shopping agents move,” Riju Dutta, co-founder of Cashfree Payments, told TechCrunch.
Apart from Razorpay, online merchant payments startup Cashfree Payments has launched its Agent Payments MCP that can help merchants enable payments directly through their shopping agents. Cashfree’s solution supports all major payment methods including cards and UPI. However, in the case of Cashfree, merchants need to develop their own shopping agent to integrate with the MCP.
The startup demonstrated the experience through a video that featured a chatbot that enables users to purchase an iPhone.
Dutta declined to name the initial merchants working on the agentic shopping experience and said, “We are exploring it with some larger enterprise merchants in categories like e-commerce and lending.”
