Razorpay and NPCI Launch Agentic UPI Payments on Claude — Zomato, Swiggy, and Zepto Go Live

Razorpay and NPCI Announce Agentic Payments on Claude

Razorpay, NPCI Enable In-Chat UPI Payments on Claude for Zomato, Swiggy, Zepto

Razorpay and NPCI enable agentic UPI payments on Claude, allowing users to order from Zomato, Swiggy, and Zepto without leaving the chat.

On February 20, 2026, Indian payment giant Razorpay and the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) announced a new feature enabling UPI agentic payments on Anthropic's AI assistant Claude at the "India AI Impact Summit" held in New Delhi. Food delivery services Zomato and Swiggy, along with quick commerce platform Zepto, have launched as initial partners.

Users can complete the entire process from product search to ordering and payment within a conversation with Claude. No app switching or manual checkout operations are required. The service is currently available in a pilot phase for a limited number of users.

The Global Wave of Agentic Payments

Agentic payments refer to a system where AI agents autonomously execute the entire process from product selection to payment on behalf of users. In traditional online payments, users had to select products, add them to a cart, and enter PINs or OTPs on the payment screen. Agentic payments have AI handle this entire sequence.

Razorpay had also partnered with OpenAI in October 2025 to announce agentic payments on ChatGPT. At that time, bigbasket (Tata Group) and Vodafone Idea (Vi) were launch partners. The Claude integration extends this initiative to a multi-AI platform approach.

India's UPI (Unified Payments Interface) processes over 20 billion transactions per month, making it one of the world's largest real-time payment infrastructures. This scale and immediacy provide the infrastructure necessary to enable agentic commerce. Razorpay CEO Harshil Mathur stated, "AI should not stop at recommendations. It should complete the purchase."

How UPI Reserve Pay Enables Safe Autonomous Payments

The technical core of this launch consists of two features provided by NPCI: "UPI Reserve Pay" and "UPI Circle."

UPI Reserve Pay is a mechanism that allows users to perform a one-time consent-based authentication in advance and set spending limits per merchant. AI agents can execute transactions within these limits without requiring individual PIN entries or OTP authentication. Users maintain real-time visibility into transactions and can instantly revoke consent at any time.

In practical usage scenarios, a user simply tells Claude, "Order the usual groceries before the match starts," and the AI understands the intent, checks inventory, reflects preferences, and completes payment processing automatically. It also handles conditional instructions such as "Find dinner options from Swiggy within a budget of 3,000 rupees."

Axis Bank and Airtel Payments Bank serve as banking partners supporting the infrastructure. NPCI's Sohini Rajola, Executive Director for Growth, commented, "The fusion of AI and UPI makes transactions more intuitive, intelligent, and inclusive."

Impact and Practical Implications for E-Commerce Businesses

This development offers three important implications for e-commerce businesses.

AI platforms are becoming new sales channels. Traditionally, websites and apps were the primary customer touchpoints, but AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude are becoming the starting point for purchases. The expansion of merchants following Zomato, Swiggy, and Zepto is certain.

Readiness for "conversational commerce" will determine competitiveness. In an environment where users can complete shopping through natural language, structuring product catalogs and designing integration with AI agents becomes critical. Beyond optimizing for search results and recommendations, businesses need to develop data structures that AI can easily understand.

Security and consent design standards are changing. In pre-authorization payment models like UPI Reserve Pay, setting spending limits and managing consent mechanisms hold the key to customer experience. Too restrictive and convenience suffers; too lenient and risks increase.

While the service is currently limited to the Indian market, Razorpay's expansion to both ChatGPT and Claude suggests a global rollout is in their sights. E-commerce businesses worldwide should prepare for the proliferation of AI platform-based payments.

Summary

Razorpay and NPCI's agentic payments on Claude represent a turning point in the evolution of AI assistants from "information tools" to "purchase-completion channels." Following the ChatGPT integration in October 2025, the expansion to Claude in just four months demonstrates the rapid pace of progress in this space.

Going forward, key areas to watch include the transition from pilot phase to general availability, expansion of supported merchants, and rollout to markets beyond India. E-commerce businesses have entered a stage where they should begin early planning for product data preparation designed for AI agent integration and adaptation to new payment flows.