India is preparing a framework that would let AI agents make small digital payments without approval for every transaction, three sources familiar with the matter said, potentially making UPI one of the world’s largest networks with agentic payments.
While leading payment companies have launched such frameworks in the U.S., Europe, Singapore and Australia, a rollout on the popular Unified Payments Interface would also put India among the first countries to have a national infrastructure for agentic AI payments.
UPI, operated by the National Payments Corporation of India, is the world’s largest retail fast-payment system by transaction volume.
It processed 24.51 billion transactions worth 29.82 trillion Indian rupees ($314.21 billion) in August, with Google Pay and Walmart’s PhonePe accounting for around three-fourths of monthly transaction volumes.
