India’s payments authority, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), and fintech firm Razorpay have partnered with Microsoft-backed OpenAI to bring payments directly to ChatGPT.
The collaboration, currently in the pilot stage, will allow users to make purchases within ChatGPT, powered by India’s homegrown Unified Payments Interface (UPI), reported Reuters.
The idea is to test how conversational AI can facilitate real-world transactions.
The pilot will evaluate how the service can be expanded across verticals and how UPI can enable AI agents with payment credentials “to autonomously complete transactions on behalf of users in a safe, secure, and user-controlled manner,” the companies said in a joint statement.
Axis Bank and Airtel Payments Bank are the banking partners for the pilot, while Tata Group-owned Bigbasket has come on board as one of the first platforms to let customers shop through ChatGPT.
“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, to unlock a new era of effortless and secure commerce,” Reuters quoted Oliver Jay, managing director of international strategy at OpenAI.
UPI, which handles over 20 billion transactions every month, continues to be at the centre of India’s digital payments ecosystem. The ChatGPT pilot is part of NPCI’s broader strategy to integrate UPI with new technologies and use cases.
On Wednesday, NPCI announced a series of initiatives that signal its growing interest in AI and automation, reported The Economic Times.
These include AI-based UPI HELP, powered by its own Small Language Model (SLM), which will assist users with payments, mandates, and dispute resolution.
It also unveiled IoT payments with UPI, which allows transactions to be made directly from connected devices such as cars, smart TVs, and wearables. Another offering, ‘banking connect’, provides an interoperable net banking solution across institutions.
NPCI also introduced ‘UPI Reserve Pay’, a feature that lets users securely block and manage credit limits for specific purposes across merchant and UPI apps.
