Pine Labs becomes OpenAI's first payments partner in India to enable agentic commerce

Pine Labs OpenAI Partnership Transforms Digital Payments Infrastructure

OpenAI has deepened its presence in India through a strategic collaboration with Pine Labs, marking the fintech company as OpenAI's first payments partner for ChatGPT in India3

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. The partnership, announced during India's AI Impact Summit 2026, will embed OpenAI's APIs into Pine Labs' digital payments infrastructure to enable agentic commerce—a model where AI-powered agents can discover, recommend, and complete transactions on behalf of users. This collaboration represents a technological leap from traditional automation to systems that employ probabilistic reasoning and AI-driven reasoning to autonomously optimize workflows while maintaining secure, compliant operations.

AI-Led Commerce in India Gains Momentum Through Merchant Ecosystem Integration

Pine Labs operates across a vast merchant ecosystem, working with more than 980,000 merchants, 716 consumer brands, and 177 financial institutions1

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. The company has processed over 6 billion cumulative transactions valued at over ₹11.4 trillion (approximately $126 billion)1

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. With India recording more than 18,000 crore digital transactions annually and the country's fintech sector expected to achieve a $1.5 trillion valuation this year, the timing of this AI integration for merchants positions Pine Labs at the forefront of India's digital payment revolution. Chief Executive Amrish Rau told ET that the partnership aims to power transactions in an AI-first consumer internet, stating, "As merchants increasingly operate in an AI-led world, Pine Labs will be able to power those transactions"3

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B2B Use Cases Drive Faster Adoption of AI-Driven Settlement and Reconciliation

Pine Labs is already leveraging AI internally to automate settlement and reconciliation processes, cutting the time required to clear daily settlements from hours to minutes1

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. The Noida-based company previously relied on manual checks by dozens of employees to process funds from multiple banks before markets opened each day—a workflow now largely handled by AI-driven systems1

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. The partnership will extend these efficiencies to merchants and corporate clients, starting with B2B use cases such as invoicing, settlement, and payments orchestration1

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. "People talk about retail AI, but the bigger impact of all of this is really efficiency improvement, especially in B2B," Amrish Rau explained. "If you look at invoicing and settlement, those are workflows where agents can actually drive the process end to end, and that's where adoption can happen faster"1

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AI in India Faces Regulatory Considerations as Global Rollout Accelerates

While the collaboration promises to transform payments infrastructure, the rollout of autonomous, agent-led payment workflows will move faster in overseas markets where regulations already permit such transactions1

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. Pine Labs is already prototyping agent-driven payments in parts of the Middle East and Southeast Asia, though AI in India is likely to see more gradual adoption focused on AI-assisted commerce rather than fully agent-initiated payments due to tighter regulatory controls on payment authorization1

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. Rau emphasized that Pine Labs is building additional security and compliance layers around AI-driven workflows to ensure sensitive merchant and consumer transaction data remains protected as AI integrates more deeply into payments systems1

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OpenAI Expands Beyond ChatGPT with Strategic Infrastructure Partnerships

This partnership underscores OpenAI's broader strategy to expand its footprint in India, one of its fastest-growing markets, as it moves beyond being known primarily as the maker of ChatGPT1

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. Earlier this week, the Sam Altman-led company partnered with leading Indian engineering, medical, and design institutions to bring AI tools into higher education, betting that India's large developer base and more than a billion internet users will play a central role in the next phase of AI adoption1

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. The Pine Labs collaboration offers OpenAI a route deeper into India's payments and enterprise ecosystem, embedding its models into high-volume, regulated workflows1

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. Rau noted the partnership does not involve revenue sharing, with the arrangement kept "completely independent"—anything related to payment services benefits Pine Labs, while OpenAI revenues go directly to them1

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. The arrangement is also non-exclusive, comparable to OpenAI's partnership with Stripe in the U.S.1

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