OpenAI, the US-based artificial intelligence research organisation, has deepened its focus on the Indian market through a strategic partnership with digital payments firm Pine Labs. The collaboration aims to integrate OpenAI’s advanced AI capabilities into Pine Labs’ payment infrastructure, with the goal of enabling a new form of commerce in which AI agents can autonomously support transactional and financial workflows for merchants and consumers.
OpenAI, known globally for its ChatGPT and other generative AI models, has been strengthening its presence in India amid rapid AI adoption and growing enterprise demand. India has one of the largest user bases for ChatGPT worldwide, and OpenAI has been investing in initiatives that boost local engagement and partnerships with key technology players. The alliance with Pine Labs marks another step in this direction, focusing on practical commercial applications of AI within the country’s digital economy.
Under the partnership, Pine Labs will embed OpenAI’s application programming interfaces into its payment and merchant ecosystem. The integration is expected to enable what companies refer to as agentic commerce. In this model, AI agents can perform tasks on behalf of users with a degree of autonomy once certain rules or preferences are set. For merchants, this could include tasks such as negotiating terms with suppliers, optimising settlement cycles, and managing routine billing or payment workflows with minimal direct oversight.
Agentic commerce represents an evolution of traditional digital payment systems, where transactions and interactions are typically initiated and controlled by human users. With AI agents capable of understanding context, weighing options, and executing actions within defined boundaries, the partnership aims to shift some commercial activities from manual execution to automated, context-aware assistance. This approach reflects broader industry interest in embedding AI more deeply into core business processes.
Pine Labs, founded in 1998 and headquartered in Noida, is a leading merchant commerce platform operating across multiple regions. The firm offers payment solutions, point-of-sale terminal support, bill payments, and digital infrastructure to merchants and enterprises. It has also raised significant funding from investors such as Peak XV Partners, PayPal, Mastercard Asia Pacific, Actis, and others, and this alliance with OpenAI builds on its efforts to expand both domestically and internationally.
The partnership was announced during India’s ongoing AI Impact Summit, which has brought together global AI leaders, government representatives, and industry delegates to discuss the future of artificial intelligence in the country. The summit underscores the central role India is playing as a growth market for AI technologies and solutions.
Pine Labs has framed the collaboration as a way to go beyond conventional automation and introduce probabilistic reasoning to its systems. By embedding AI with capabilities that go beyond deterministic logic, the company expects to support workflows that can interpret context, anticipate needs, and act within a secure and compliant framework. This represents a shift from traditional rule-based systems to AI-enabled decision support, which can handle more complex, multi-step tasks.
The idea of agentic commerce extends a broader trend in the fintech and martech sectors where AI technologies are being harnessed not only for insights and recommendations but also for task execution. Industry experts see this as an emerging frontier for businesses looking to streamline operations and reduce friction in both customer interactions and internal processes. Technologies that allow machine agents to interact with payment systems, analytics, and customer interfaces could redefine how transactions are managed in digital environments.
India’s digital payments landscape has grown significantly in the past decade, supported by public infrastructure such as the Unified Payments Interface and a busy ecosystem of fintech startups. Traditional players and newer entrants alike have been developing solutions that simplify payments, enhance security, and improve efficiency for merchants and consumers alike. The introduction of AI-enabled agentic functions adds another layer of sophistication to this growth trajectory.
Pine Labs has already been experimenting with AI-driven services in other contexts. Its subsidiary Setu, for example, launched an agentic bill-payments experience that integrates with AI platforms to help users manage recurring payments more efficiently. That earlier initiative illustrated how autonomous agents can handle routine tasks such as fetching bills, spotting anomalies, and processing payments securely within user-defined limits.
Beyond operational benefits, the partnership is likely to have implications for how brands and merchants engage with customers at the point of sale and beyond. As AI agents become capable of interacting across discovery, recommendation, and completion stages of commercial activities, businesses may find new opportunities to personalise interactions, streamline checkout processes, and differentiate their offerings in a competitive market.
OpenAI’s strategy in India includes broader efforts such as partnerships with educational institutions and the launch of local initiatives designed to expand AI access and skills. The Pine Labs partnership is part of this ecosystem engagement, positioning generative and agentic AI technologies as practical tools that can support business transformation.
The development also comes against a backdrop of increased interest from global AI companies in the Indian market, driven by a combination of rapid digital adoption, a large user base for AI tools, and strong demand for enterprise-grade solutions. For fintech firms like Pine Labs, collaborations with AI innovators can enhance technological capabilities while reinforcing their role in the evolution of digital commerce.
As the implementation of agentic commerce unfolds, industry observers will be watching closely to gauge how effectively AI agents can balance autonomy with security, compliance, and user control. The blend of AI reasoning with financial workflows presents both opportunities and challenges, and outcomes will likely shape future integrations between AI platforms and fintech infrastructure.