India should not depend on Western markets to define standards for agentic payments, Pine Labs Chief Executive Officer Amrish Rau said on Thursday as the company unveiled its Pine Labs Payment Protocol (P3P) for agentic UPI transactions.
Speaking at a press conference after a demonstration of an agent-to-agent transaction, Rau said India should play a leading role in shaping the infrastructure for autonomous commerce.
“Our responsibility is to create the infrastructure and then transactions will go on building, merchants will come on board, consumer behaviour will change,” he said.
“What is super important is India shouldn’t get left behind in this game. India shouldn’t be looking to the West to figure out what is the protocol they are doing and how this can be implemented.”
Card payments could be added
Pine Labs said it was in talks with card networks to bring card-based transactions onto the system.
The move could expand payment options beyond the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
Rau said Pine Labs was the first company to introduce an agentic payments protocol within India’s regulatory framework.
He added that wider adoption by merchants and consumers could help P3P emerge as a market standard.
“Now we have released the protocol. If we can have enough merchants actually consuming this, then there is a higher likelihood for that protocol to become the de facto standard in the market,” he said.
Protocol built for autonomous commerce
According to the company, P3P provides payment and settlement rails for autonomous commerce.
The protocol uses:
- UPI Reserve Pay
- One-time mandates
These mechanisms allow AI agents to trigger transactions.
Pine Labs said the system is designed to address a key hurdle faced by agentic workflows, where transactions previously required human intervention at the checkout stage.
Safeguards built into the system
The company said AI agents can execute payments through user-registered UPI mandates while operating within predefined limits.
P3P includes several safeguards, including:
- Continuous audits
- Verifiable identity
- Transaction logs
- Spend controls
- Other monitoring mechanisms
Rau said the protocol is “completely compliant” with existing regulations.
Early deployments under way
Digital gold fintech Gullak has gone live on P3P, according to Pine Labs.
Retail electronics chain Vijay Sales is conducting an active proof of concept using the protocol.
The company said deployments are under way across:
- Retail
- Fintech
- Travel
- Other sectors
Pine Labs added that it is in discussions with merchants in multiple industries to drive adoption.
AI interfaces may become transaction gateways
Rau said some transactions in future may originate from AI interfaces rather than traditional payment apps.
“One thing which is beyond doubt is there will be a fair amount of transactions where the surface area will not be a TPAP. The surface area might very well be ChatGPT or Claude, where the transaction is coming from,” he said.
At the same time, he said third-party application providers (TPAPs) would continue to play an important role.
“I don’t see TPAPs going away because that’s still the home,” Rau added.
TPAPs are NPCI-certified UPI applications such as PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm.
TL;DR:
Pine Labs has launched the P3P protocol for agentic UPI payments. CEO Amrish Rau said India should develop its own standards for autonomous commerce and revealed that the company is exploring support for card-based transactions.
AI summary:
- Pine Labs launched the P3P protocol for agentic UPI payments.
- CEO Amrish Rau said India should not rely on the West for payment standards.
- The company is discussing card-based transactions with card networks.
- Gullak is live on P3P and Vijay Sales is testing the protocol.
- Rau said AI interfaces such as ChatGPT and Claude could become transaction gateways.
