India building unified agent protocol for AI agents' UPI payments
India is building a system where AI agents can make small UPI payments for you (no need to approve every time).
This proposed setup, called Unified Agent Protocol (UAP), would standardize how these AI agents are registered, verified, and authorized to make payments securely through UPI.
If all goes well, UPI could become one of the world's largest networks built for agentic payments.
UPI recorded 24.51B transactions Aug 2026
UPI is already huge: Google Pay and PhonePe handle 75% of its transactions, with 24.51 billion transactions in August 2026 alone.
The first use cases for UAP are likely to be everyday stuff like grocery shopping, but it could eventually cover things like automated investments.
To keep things safe, features like spending limits and identity checks are expected to be built into the system so you stay in control.