India’s payments authority National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and fintech platform Razorpay have joined hands with Microsoft-backed OpenAI to test artificial intelligence–driven payments on ChatGPT.
The pilot will allow users to make purchases directly within ChatGPT using India’s homegrown Unified Payments Interface (UPI). The experiment aims to see how UPI can power AI systems to complete transactions on behalf of users — safely, securely, and under user control.
Axis Bank and Airtel Payments Bank are supporting the pilot as banking partners, while Tata Group–owned Bigbasket is one of the first platforms to enable ChatGPT-based shopping for its customers.
The companies said the pilot will help understand how conversational AI could integrate with India’s real-time payments network across different use cases — from retail purchases to service payments.
Oliver Jay, managing director of international strategy at OpenAI, said the collaboration will explore how advanced AI and UPI can work together to create simple and secure payment experiences.
UPI, which already handles more than 20 billion transactions each month, is seen as the backbone of India’s digital payments system. The pilot could offer early insights into how AI-driven assistants might handle routine financial tasks in the future.
