On February 19, 2026, during the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, OpenAI and Pine Labs announced a landmark strategic partnership. This collaboration makes Pine Labs the first payments partner for ChatGPT in India, effectively bridging the gap between AI-led discovery and financial checkout.
The central theme of the tie-up is the shift to “Agentic Commerce”—a model where AI agents move beyond just providing information to autonomously completing transactions and optimizing business workflows.
Key Pillars of the Partnership
The integration embeds OpenAI’s reasoning capabilities directly into Pine Labs’ merchant and payment infrastructure.
- Agent-Led Checkout: Allows users to complete purchases within conversational interfaces like ChatGPT. For example, a user could ask for a gift recommendation and buy it instantly without leaving the chat.
- The “Reasoning Layer”: Pine Labs is using OpenAI APIs to build an intelligent layer for commerce. Instead of simple “if/then” rules, systems can now interpret context, weigh probabilities, and manage complex B2B tasks like settlement and reconciliation.
- Automated Back-Office: Pine Labs has already integrated AI internally to cut settlement times from hours to minutes, automating the verification of transactions across multiple banking channels.
- Open Financial Stack: Pine Labs plans to make this “agentic stack” available to third-party developers, enabling them to build AI-native fintech apps on their infrastructure.
Strategic Impact for India
This partnership is a cornerstone of the “OpenAI for India” initiative, which includes other major collaborations (like the one with Tata Group for data centers).
| Feature | Impact for Merchants |
| Invoicing | AI-generated audit trails and automatic pre-population of GSTIN/e-invoicing schemas. |
| Settlement | Real-time resolution of exceptions and faster cash cycles for small businesses. |
| Fraud Detection | Dynamic, AI-driven fraud scoring for every transaction on the network. |
| B2B Logic | Handling bulk transfers and custom credit terms that usually require manual oversight. |
Non-Exclusive & Sovereign Integration
- Data Residency: As part of the broader OpenAI-Tata partnership, these services will eventually run on local, AI-ready data centers in India to ensure data residency and compliance.
- No Revenue Share: The agreement is structured without revenue sharing, mirroring OpenAI’s global model with platforms like Stripe. This keeps the economics “clean” for merchants while allowing them to opt into premium AI features.+1
- Future Rollout: While full “AI-initiated” payments are launching in overseas markets first, the Indian rollout will initially emphasize AI-assisted transactions to stay within local regulatory guardrails.
“For decades, commerce has been built on passive systems. Our work with OpenAI ensures that our infrastructure is no longer just a participant in a trade, but a driver of efficiency and growth.” — Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs.
