(Reuters) -India’s payments authority National Payments Corporation of India and fintech firm Razorpay have collaborated with Microsoft-backed OpenAI to launch AI-driven payments on ChatGPT, the companies said on Thursday.
The initiative, currently in the pilot stage, will allow users to make purchases on ChatGPT, facilitated by India’s homegrown payments network Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
The pilot will evaluate how the service can be expanded across verticals and how UPI can be used to 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 statement.
Axis Bank and Airtel Payments Bank are the banking partners for the pilot, and Tata Group-owned e-commerce platform Bigbasket is among the first platforms to allow customers to 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,” Oliver Jay, managing director of international strategy at OpenAI said.
UPI, India’s leading fast payments network, processes over 20 billion transactions every month.
(Reporting by Ashwin Manikandan in Mumbai and Kashish Tandon in Bengaluru; Editing by Sumana Nandy and Mrigank Dhaniwala)
