NPCI UPI agentic payments: how it relates to agent payment protocols

Steward: National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI, operator of UPI), with Razorpay as payment aggregator and OpenAI and Anthropic as AI platform partners
Status: Pilot
Latest version: Claude pilot (2026-02-20)
Primary source: Razorpay, NPCI, and OpenAI Come Together to Launch Agentic Payments, Ushering in AI-Driven Commerce at National Scale (external link)

What it is

UPI is India’s real-time account-to-account payment system, run by NPCI. Its agentic pilots do not add a new protocol on the wire; they reuse two UPI features that let a user hand bounded authority to someone else. ^{Source [1]}

UPI Reserve Pay, which Razorpay describes as built on NPCI’s Single Block Multi Debit (SBMD) framework, lets a user block an amount for a merchant once (with the UPI PIN) and then allows several debits against that block without another PIN prompt. ^{Source [2]} UPI Circle lets a primary user delegate UPI payments to a secondary user within limits. ^{Source [1, 3]} Together they give an AI a pre-authorized, capped and merchant-scoped budget.

The pilots

The first pilot was announced on 2025-10-09 by Razorpay, NPCI and OpenAI as “Agentic Payments” on ChatGPT, described as being in the pilot stage. Razorpay’s banking partners were Axis Bank and Airtel Payments Bank, and NPCI’s growth executive director was quoted in the release. ^{Source [1]} Bigbasket was among the first merchants, and TechCrunch reported Vi mobile recharges as another. ^{Source [3]} Razorpay’s newsroom page carries a 2025-10-30 publication timestamp, while the joint announcement and news coverage are dated 2025-10-09; this page uses 2025-10-09 for the announcement. ^{Source [1]}

On 2026-02-20, at the India AI Impact Summit, Razorpay and NPCI brought the same model to Anthropic’s Claude. Users can order food, groceries and essentials from Zomato, Swiggy and Zepto inside the conversation, approving one spending limit per merchant through Reserve Pay, and Razorpay said this pilot runs with a small group of users. ^{Source [4]} Razorpay’s 2026-03-12 blog post offers Reserve Pay to merchants through early access, with agentic payments as one use. ^{Source [2]}

Status

Both deployments are pilots. What is not yet public is a national rulebook. From July to September 2026 outlets reported that NPCI was preparing a framework for payments on UPI, with an AI-agent registry and phased rollout, expected around Global Fintech Fest 2026; reported caps differ between outlets and are not rules. ^{Source [5]} No NPCI circular or press release confirming the framework, limits or liability was found on 2026-10-11, so the framework is reported only.

How it relates to the eight

UPI agentic payments are closest in spirit to AP2 and to card-network agentic tokens: a user-approved, capped, merchant-scoped authority that the spends. The difference is that the scope is enforced by the payment system itself (the blocked amount in the user’s bank account) rather than by a signed or a token’s controls. ^{Source [2]} The ChatGPT pilot is an OpenAI partnership, but the releases do not say it uses ACP. ^{Source [1]}

Status history

2025-10-09: Razorpay, NPCI and OpenAI announce the ChatGPT agentic payments pilot on UPI. ^{Source [1]}
2026-02-20: Razorpay and NPCI announce the Claude pilot (Zomato, Swiggy, Zepto). ^{Source [4]}
2026-03-12: Razorpay describes Reserve Pay as built on NPCI’s SBMD framework. ^{Source [2]}
September 2026 (month only): NPCI registry and framework reported around Global Fintech Fest 2026 (reported, not confirmed by NPCI). ^{Source [5]}

Relations at a glance

How NPCI UPI agentic payments relates to each protocol
Protocol	Relation	Note
AP2	Competes with	A different mechanism for the same job (user-approved, capped agent spending); neither references the other.

Back to the orbit

Sources

Razorpay, NPCI, and OpenAI Come Together to Launch Agentic Payments, Ushering in AI-Driven Commerce at National Scale (external link)Razorpay. Announcement, primary source. Published 2025-10-09. Accessed 2026-10-11.
Payments at the Speed of Intent: Reimagining Checkout with UPI Reserve Pay (external link)Razorpay. Documentation, primary source. Published 2026-03-12. Accessed 2026-10-11.
OpenAI's ChatGPT in India: UPI agentic payments pilot (TechCrunch) (external link)TechCrunch. News. Published 2025-10-09. Accessed 2026-10-11.
Razorpay and NPCI Launch Agentic Payments on Claude, Powering Zomato, Swiggy and Zepto at the India AI Impact Summit (external link)Razorpay. Announcement, primary source. Published 2026-02-20. Accessed 2026-10-11.
India plans AI-agent registry for UPI payments (external link)TechNode Global (relaying Reuters). News. Published 2026-09-12. Accessed 2026-10-11.