India is exploring a framework to enable agentic payments via UPI, allowing AI agents to initiate small transactions without user approval for every payment.

Pilot programs are already underway: Pine Labs’ P3P protocol enables AI agents to complete UPI payments after upfront user authorization; Gullak uses an AI agent for gold savings with P3P; Mastercard has run its first authenticated agentic transaction in New Delhi, with Visa and other players developing similar capabilities; Razorpay has launched Agent Studio for merchants using Anthropic’s Claude Agent SDK.

Initial use cases are expected to be low-value, high-frequency purchases (like groceries), with e-commerce firms likely to lead early adoption and later expanding to more complex scenarios such as reacting to sales and automated investing based on price thresholds.

A liability framework and audit trails are planned, along with identity verification for agents, to ensure authorized transactions and legitimate agents, though exact details have not been disclosed.

The proposed Unified Agent Protocol (UAP) would register, verify, and authorize AI agents to transact on UPI, employing mechanisms like UPI Circle and Reserve Pay to delegate authority and block funds, potentially adjusting existing Rs 10,000 transaction blocks to extend up to 90 days.