India is experimenting with AI-driven chatbot-led e-commerce with ChatGPT, Gemini, and Cloude

India has launched a pilot program to let consumers shop and pay directly through AI-powered chatbots, with OpenAI’s ChatGPT leading the rollout and integration with Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude in development, as the South Asian country becomes the next major market for global AI companies.

On Thursday, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the federal body behind the country’s widely used Unified Payments Interface (UPI), entered into a partnership with OpenAI and fintech company Razorpay to enable consumers to shop and pay directly through ChatGPT. Razorpay confirmed to TechCrunch that the pilot will roll out nationwide and become widely available in the coming months.

Experience is based on UPI Reserve Payment – A new NPCI protocol that allows users to block a specific amount of funds for future debit to designated merchants – and UBI Departmenta solution that delegates UPI authentication, enabling payments to be completed directly within ChatGPT without switching to external apps or websites. Razorpay has developed a merchant integration layer that allows businesses to transact through AI-powered chatbots.

Tata group-owned online grocery store Bigbasket and telecom operator Vi are the initial commercial partners for the new pilot, allowing customers to shop for groceries or purchase mobile recharge plans directly through ChatGPT. Additionally, Axis Bank and Airtel Payments Bank operate the banking layer.

India, the world’s most populous country with more than a billion Internet subscribers, has already become so One of the best OpenAI marketplaces for ChatGPT. OpenAI is looking to expand its presence in the country, as it has launched a platform ChatGPT Go plan for less than $5 In August to attract more subscribers. The commercial pilot is part of its broader endeavor to deepen engagement and benefit from India’s rapidly expanding digital economy.

“It’s not just a payment experience,” Harshil Mathur, co-founder and CEO of Razorpay, said in an interview. “It’s a whole new discovery and business experience.”

UPI has already been a huge success in India, powering over 20 billion transactions every month and serving as the country’s leading digital payments channel. However, the new AI-led experience could help NPCI boost adoption by integrating UPI into everyday commerce if consumers embrace chatbots as a new interface for shopping.

Mathur told TechCrunch that the company also completed a proof of concept for a new agent payment experience with Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude. These integrations will go live to consumers within a few weeks, he said.

Razorpay is also in talks with merchants other than Bigbasket and Vi and expects a broader rollout in the next couple of months, Mathur said.

Like OpenAI, both Google and Anthropic are seeing a surge in new users from India. Although Google already has a deep local presence — with mass-market products like Android, Search, and YouTube — OpenAI and Anthropic are now… Take steps to create a fingerprint In the country where they are working on localizing their AI offerings for Indian users.

India’s current agent payments plan does not include any specific model for revenue sharing between the partners involved. However, the move would help AI companies including OpenAI achieve greater user retention.

Mathur confirmed to TechCrunch that AI companies will not be able to access payment data under the new setup, and users will pre-authorize the amount transacted through chatbots through two-factor authentication.

Last month, it introduced OpenAI Instant checkout experience. And its Proxy Commerce Protocol, developed in partnership with Stripe, to help businesses and merchants connect with consumers using AI agents. Likewise, Google launched Agent Payments Protocol To enable AI agents to conduct transactions on behalf of users.

“This is still an early and forward-looking concept, but it has huge potential. Its adoption will grow organically in line with how quickly shopping agents take off,” Riju Datta, co-founder of Cashfree Payments, told TechCrunch.

In addition to Razorpay, online merchant payments startup Cashfree Payments has launched Agentic Payments MCP that can help merchants enable payments directly through their shopping agents. The Cashfree solution supports all major payment methods including cards and Unified Payment Interface (UPI). However, in the case of Cashfree, merchants need to develop shopping agents themselves to integrate with MCP.

The startup demonstrated its experience through a video showing a chatbot that enables users to buy an iPhone.

Datta declined to name the first merchants working on the agent shopping experience, saying only: “We are exploring this with a few large enterprise merchants across categories like e-commerce and lending.”