NPCI, Anthropic test AI-driven shopping pilot using UPI payments

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has partnered with Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company, to launch a pilot program that allows consumers to order groceries and meals through the Claude AI application, utilizing the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for seamless transactions. According to NPCI's Executive Director of Growth, Sohini Rajola, this initiative is part of a broader push towards agentic commerce, where users can assign their purchasing tasks to an AI assistant. Currently, the pilot is operating as a closed user group (CUG), allowing the developers to refine the user experience before it becomes available to the general public. Once fully operational, this service will enable users to effortlessly shop for groceries and meals from top platforms like BigBasket, Zomato, and Swiggy Instamart, all within a chat interface. Users will have the ability to set a payment limit, with transactions allowed up to Rs. 15,000, enhancing the convenience of digital shopping. The UPI network, managed by NPCI, processes billions of transactions monthly and has established itself as a crucial part of India's digital payments infrastructure. In an interview with Business Today, Rajola highlighted that the Claude pilot builds upon previous collaborations with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, which connected conversational interfaces to UPI for various use cases, including payments and balance queries. This new engagement with Anthropic aims to streamline the entire shopping experience, from product discovery to order placement and real-time payments, all through a cohesive AI-driven workflow. However, specifics regarding the pilot's scale, participating merchants, and plans for a wider launch have yet to be disclosed.