Indian users will soon be able to make UPI payments directly through ChatGPT

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the government entity behind the United Payments Interface (UPI), has announced a partnership with OpenAI and Razorpay to enable direct payments via ChatGPT. As part of this agreement, Indian shoppers will soon be able to shop and pay for things while talking to AI chatbots like ChatGPT.

The move comes after Google and Perplexity announced their own AI-powered payment services. Razorpay has now revealed that it has started privately testing the beta version of Agentic Payments, a feature that lets users complete transactions without leaving the AI platform they are using.

The ongoing pilot, according to Reuters will help determine how UPI can be used “to autonomously complete transactions on behalf of users in a safe, secure and user-controlled manner.”

The functionality will make use of UPI’s newly introduced ‘reserve pay’ feature, which allows users to dedicate a portion of their funds for specific merchants, along with UPI Circle, a feature that lets users make UPI payments without having to leave an app.

Airtel Payments Bank and Axis Bank are the banking partners for the pilot program, while Tata Group’s BigBasket and network operator Vodafone Idea will be among the first platforms to allow payments through ChatGPT. 

In a statement to a media house, RazorPay co-founder and CEO Harshil Mathur said that they have also completed trials for the new agentic AI payment systems with other AI chatbots like Gemini and Claude. However, it will still take a few weeks before these integrations go live.