India Eyes AI-powered UPI Payments As NPCI Develops Protocol For Agentic Transactions

BW Businessworld

"The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is developing a framework that could enable artificial intelligence (AI) agents to independently initiate and complete Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions on behalf of users. The proposed framework is known as the Unified Agent Protocol (UAP). AI agents would undergo verification and registration before being permitted to access UPI payment rails. The protocol will validate whether an AI agent is legitimate, determine the scope of its authority and define transaction limits."