India Preparing Rollout of Agentic Payments on UPI
The new protocol would let AI agents handle small, rule-based UPI payments with spending limits and audit trails, sources said.
- On Tuesday, the National Payments Corporation of India began preparing the Unified Agent Protocol for AI payments, with sources expecting an unveiling next week at the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai.
- Building on existing Unified Payments Interface mechanisms, the protocol leverages UPI Circle, which delegates payment authority to secondary users, and Reserve Pay, which blocks funds for multiple debits.
- Customers can set rule-based instructions for AI agents to purchase groceries or make investments, with built-in spending limits and audit trails; banks currently cap such blocks at 10,000 rupees for up to 90 days.
- Global card networks Mastercard and Visa are separately building similar agentic capabilities in India, while fintech firm Pine Labs launched its own protocol, P3P, earlier this year.
- The rollout would position India among the first countries with national infrastructure for agentic AI payments, leveraging the world's largest retail fast-payment system, as NPCI also plans to include a liability framework.
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Imagine you tell an AI agent to buy groceries within a set budget every week. It then selects the items, checks the prices, and makes the payment using UPI. You don't need to provide separate approval each time. Such a system is being developed in India for digital payments.
India preparing rollout of agentic payments on UPI, sources say
India is working to enable AI-driven agents to handle small-value digital payments on its payments network without requiring separate approval for each transaction. The move could make India’s UPI one of the first infrastructures in the world to support agent-based AI payments at a national level.
Your AI agent could soon pay through UPI. Here's how it may work
India is working on a framework that could let AI agents make small UPI payments under user-set rules. The proposal could bring agentic payments to the national network while adding limits, checks and liability safeguards.
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