Pine Labs launches AI-driven agentic payment protocol
New Delhi, June 11
India's e-commerce wave is entering its next phase as agentic AI makes its way to UPI transactions. Pine Labs, a merchant commerce platform, launched a payment protocol, P3P, allowing the completion of a UPI payment without any human authentication.
The P3P payment protocol works by extending the UPI's existing mandate into payments triggered by AI agents.
"The consumer authorises once, upfront. After that, the agent browses, selects, negotiates, and pays. No human authentication. No interruption. No friction," the company said.
The global agentic commerce market is projected to grow to USD65.47 billion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 35.7% (Grand View Research, 2025). With the launch of the payment protocol, India is well poised to be at the centre of this boom.
An agent securing a flash sale the moment it goes live. A down payment locked in before inventory disappears. A savings trigger at the right price. These are new behaviours, native to how India transacts. Pine Labs is building the commerce infrastructure for that world. Not catching up to anyone. Building ahead," Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs, said.
The P3P protocol lets an AI agent authenticate a transaction on a user's behalf. The protocol provides payment and settlement rails while Grantex provides verifiable identity, delegated authorization, spend controls and auditability. Together with HTTP 402 that allows a standardised protocol for discovering and requesting payment, the entire framework enables trusted, secure, and auditable agent-to-agent transactions on behalf of merchants without requiring human intervention.
The P3P has been anchored on the UPI's Single Block Multiple Debit (SBMD) and One Time Mandate (OTM) frameworks.
"By anchoring P3P onto this architecture, Pine Labs keeps the consumer in absolute control -- authorising a single mandate upfront, with Grantex ensuring the AI stays within its bounds," the company said.
Digital gold savings platform Gullak is live on P3P allowing users to use its AI agent to make purchases if the gold hits their target price.
"With P3P, we are moving from manual savings to autonomous wealth creation. Pine Labs has built the infrastructure to make this possible," Manthan Shah, Co-founder, Gullak, said.
— ANI
Reader Comments
Interesting but scary. Giving AI permission to spend money without my confirmation each time? I don't trust any algorithm that much. What if the AI misreads market conditions and buys gold at a peak thinking it's a dip? Or worse, what if someone hacks the mandate and drains your account? We need rigorous testing and consumer protection laws before this goes mainstream. UPI is trustable because we approve each payment. This removes that human oversight.
Pine Labs is consistently ahead of its time. First they made card payments seamless for merchants, now they're building the rails for AI-driven commerce. The key differentiator here seems to be the Grantex layer for identity and spend controls. If a consumer can set limits and audit trails, this could work. But I'm curious about latency - UPI mandates already have some delays in real-time use. Will this add more friction or truly be frictionless?
As someone who's been in fintech for a decade, I'm cautiously optimistic. The concept of delegated authorization is solid, and anchoring on UPI's existing mandate framework (SBMD/OTM) is smart regulatory compliance. But the $65B market projection assumes universal trust in AI agents - which is far from reality in most markets. However, Indian consumers have shown remarkable digital adoption leapfrogging, so who knows? Gullak's use case is actually quite compelling for the disciplined investor.
Yeh sab theek hai, but what about the common man? My father still uses cash for everything. First we need to ensure everyone has access to basic UPI, then talk about AI agents. India has massive digital divide. But I appreciate Pine Labs thinking ahead - at this rate, we might actually leapfrog the West in autonomous commerce too. Just hope they don't forget about smaller merchants who still struggle with simple QR payments.
We welcome thoughtful discussions from our readers. Please keep comments respectful and on-topic.