You can soon perform agentic payments through UPI
What's the story
India is gearing up to introduce a framework that will enable artificial intelligence (AI) agents to make small digital payments without needing approval for each transaction. The move could make the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) one of the biggest networks in the world with agentic payments. Currently, leading payment companies have launched such frameworks in the US, Europe, Singapore and Australia.
Transaction volume
UPI processed over 24.5B transactions in August
UPI, managed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), is already the world's largest retail fast-payment system by transaction volume.
According to a 2025 IMF report, it processed 24.51 billion transactions worth ₹29.82 lakh crore ($314.21 billion) in August alone.
Google Pay and PhonePe account for nearly 75% of this monthly transaction volume.
Upcoming launch
Unified Agent Protocol will likely leverage existing UPI mechanisms
The Unified Agent Protocol is likely to be unveiled next week at the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai.
This protocol will likely leverage two existing UPI mechanisms.
They include UPI Circle, which allows a primary account holder to delegate payment authority to a secondary user such as an AI agent, and Reserve Pay, which enables customers to block funds for multiple debits.
Use cases
Early use cases likely to be in e-commerce
Low-value, frequent purchases such as groceries are likely to be among the first use cases for this new system.
E-commerce platforms are expected to capture early demand.
Over time, NPCI expects these use cases to become more sophisticated with AI agents placing orders based on sale offers/discounts, and making investments based on specified instructions around price thresholds.
Merchant integration
NPCI to ensure merchants can integrate with new system
NPCI is expected to provide infrastructure for merchants to integrate directly with this new system.
This would let customers set rule-based instructions for AI agents on when and how much to pay, with built-in spending limits, audit trails, and identity checks.
The NPCI also plans to build in a liability framework into the system, though details of this remain undisclosed at present.