India has launched a pilot to allow consumers to shop and pay directly through AI chatbots, with OpenAI’s ChatGPT leading the rollout and development integration with Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude, as the South Asian country becomes the next major market for global AI companies.
On Thursday, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the federal agency behind India’s widely used Unified Payments Interface (UPI), partnered with OpenAI and fintech company Razorpay to enable consumers to shop and pay directly through ChatGPT. Razorpay confirmed to TechCrunch that the pilot is being rolled out nationwide and will be widely available in the coming months.
The experience is built on UPI Reserve Pay, a new NPCI protocol that allows users to block a specific amount of funds for future debits to designated merchants, and UPI Circle, a solution that delegates UPI authentication, allowing users to complete payments directly within ChatGPT without having to switch to an external app or website. Razorpay has developed a merchant integration layer that allows businesses to transact through AI chatbots.
Tata Group-owned online grocer BigBasket and telco Vi are the first retail partners in the new pilot, which will enable customers to shop for groceries and purchase mobile recharge plans directly through ChatGPT. Additionally, Axis Bank and Airtel Payments Bank strengthen the banking layer.
India, the world’s most populous country with over 1 billion internet subscribers, is already one of the top markets for OpenAI’s ChatGPT. OpenAI is aiming to expand its footprint in Japan, and launched a ChatGPT Go plan priced under $5 in August to gain more subscribers. The commerce experiment is part of a broader push to deepen engagement and capitalize on India’s rapidly expanding digital economy.
“This is more than just a payment experience,” Harshil Mathur, co-founder and CEO of Razorpay, said in an interview. “This is a whole new discovery and commerce experience.”
UPI is already a huge success in India, fulfilling over 20 billion transactions every month and serving as India’s leading digital payment channel. Still, if consumers embrace chatbots as a new interface for shopping, the new AI-driven experience could help NPCI drive further adoption by incorporating UPI into everyday commerce.
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Mathur told TechCrunch that the company has also completed proofs of concept for new agent payments experiences with Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude. These integrations will be available to consumers in the coming weeks, he said.
Mathur said Razorpay is in talks with other merchants besides BigBasket and Vi, and a broader rollout is planned in the coming months.
Like OpenAI, both Google and Anthropic are seeing a surge 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 services for Indian users.
India’s current plans with proxy payments do not include a specific revenue sharing model for the partners involved. However, the move will help AI companies, including OpenAI, increase user retention.
Mathur confirmed to TechCrunch that under the new settings, AI companies will not have access to payment data and users will have to pre-approve transaction amounts through a chatbot through two-factor authentication.
Last month, OpenAI introduced an “instant checkout” experience developed in partnership with Stripe and its agenttic commerce protocol to help businesses and sellers connect with consumers using AI agents. Similarly, Google has launched an agent payments protocol that allows AI agents to conduct transactions on behalf of users.
“This is still an early and forward-looking concept, but it has tremendous potential. As shopping agents become more popular, we will see its adoption increase naturally,” Reeju Datta, co-founder of Cashfree Payments, told TechCrunch.
In addition to Razorpay, online merchant payments startup Cashfree Payments has launched Agentic Payments MCP, which helps merchants make payments directly through shopping agents. Cashfree’s solution supports all major payment methods including cards and UPI. However, with Cashfree, merchants must develop their own shopping agents to integrate with MCP.
The startup demonstrated its experience through a video showing a chatbot that allows users to buy an iPhone.
Datta declined to name the first merchant to work on the agent-powered shopping experience, saying only that “we are considering this with several large corporate merchants across categories such as e-commerce and lending.”
