{"id":157672,"date":"2026-09-01T10:23:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T10:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/157672\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T10:23:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T10:23:14","slug":"india-preparing-rollout-of-agentic-payments-on-upi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/157672\/","title":{"rendered":"India preparing rollout of agentic payments on UPI"},"content":{"rendered":"

India is preparing a framework that would let AI agents make small \u200bdigital payments without approval for every transaction, \u200bthree sources familiar with the matter said, potentially making UPI one of \u200bthe world’s largest networks with agentic payments.<\/p>\n

While leading payment companies have launched such frameworks in the U.S., Europe, Singapore and Australia, a rollout on the popular Unified Payments Interface<\/a> would also put India among the first countries to have \u200ca national infrastructure \u2060for \u2060agentic AI payments.<\/p>\n

UPI, operated by the National Payments Corporation of India, is the world’s largest retail fast-payment system by transaction volume, \u200baccording to a 2025 IMF report.<\/p>\n

It processed 24.51 billion transactions worth Rs 29.82 lakh crore ($314.21 billion) in August, \u200bwith Google Pay and Walmart’s PhonePe accounting for around three-fourths of monthly transaction volumes.<\/p>\n

The Unified Agent Protocol is likely to be unveiled next week at the Global Fintech Fest<\/a> in Mumbai, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the details are private.<\/p>\n

The NPCI did not \u2060immediately respond \u200cto Reuters queries seeking comment.<\/p>\n

Early use cases<\/p>\n

Low-value, frequent purchases such as groceries are \u200blikely to be \u200bamong the first use cases, the first source said, adding that e-commerce \u2060platforms are well-placed to capture early demand.<\/p>\n

NPCI expects use cases to \u200beventually become more sophisticated, the source said. For example, AI agents could \u200bplace orders based on sale offers and discounts and make investments based on specified instructions around price thresholds.<\/p>\n

The protocol is expected to draw on two existing UPI mechanisms – UPI Circle, which lets a primary account holder delegate payment authority to a secondary user such as an AI agent, and Reserve Pay, which lets customers block funds for multiple debits.<\/p>\n

Banks currently cap such blocks at Rs 10,000 ($105.44) \u200cfor up to 90 days, though this limit and its validity may be revisited for agentic use, the sources added.<\/p>\n

NPCI is expected to offer infrastructure for merchants \u200bto integrate directly, \u200bletting customers set rule-based instructions \u2060for AI agents on when and how much to pay, with built-in spending limits, audit trails and identity checks, the sources said.<\/p>\n

They added that the NPCI plans to build in a liability framework, \u200bbut did not provide details.<\/p>\n

Global push<\/p>\n

Global card networks Mastercard and Visa are also separately building similar agentic capabilities for payments in India, mirroring a global push by these companies to secure AI-driven commerce.<\/p>\n

Mastercard completed its first authenticated agentic transaction in New Delhi in June.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, fintech firm Pine Labs<\/a> launched its own agentic protocol, P3P, letting AI agents complete UPI payments after a single upfront authorisation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"India is preparing a framework that would let AI agents make small \u200bdigital payments without approval for every…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[179,76808,7493,76807,76809,70166,76805,76810,54315,76806],"class_list":["post-157672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-agentic-ai","tag-agentic-ai","tag-agentic-ai-payments","tag-agentic-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai-payment-framework","tag-digital-payments-india","tag-global-fintech-fest","tag-india-agentic-payments","tag-pine-labs","tag-unified-payments-interface","tag-upi-payments-rollout"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}