Now, AI agents can decide when to strike deals using UPI mandate
MUMBAI: Pine Labs has launched India’s first agent-to-agent payment capability, enabling autonomous transactions through artificial intelligence by extending UPI’s standing mandate framework to machines.
The company on Thursday introduced the Pine Labs Payment Protocol (P3P), allowing users to authorise a onetime mandate that can be delegated to an AI agent, which can then independently decide when to execute a payment based on predefined conditions and negotiations with a counter-party agent. The move removes the need for human authentication at the point of transaction, a longstanding limitation in digital payments.
The launch was demonstrated in partnership with Gullak, a digital gold savings platform, where users can instruct an AI agent to purchase gold automatically when prices fall to a specified level. Once the mandate is approved, the agent monitors price movements and completes the transaction without requiring further user intervention. A deployment is also underway with Vijay Sales, where customers can set target prices for electronic goods and deploy AI agents to strike a deal when their target price is achieved, turning price discovery and purchase into a continuous, machine-driven process.
P3P builds on UPI’s existing mandate architecture, including one-time mandates and block-and-debit frameworks, to enable what Pine Labs describes as “agentic commerce”, where software agents can browse, negotiate and pay on behalf of users. The system incorporates controls such as spending limits, identity verification and audit trails.
According to Moneycontrol, Pine Labs on June 11 launched end-to-end agentic payment using the popular Unified Payments Interface (UPI) method on merchant apps and websites without any human intervention. Pine Labs solution is built on top of Reserve Pay, including one-time mandates and reserve payment mechanisms. Under the model, users authorise a mandate in advance, allowing an AI agent to execute transactions within predefined limits and conditions.
Digital gold platform Gullak has partnered with Pine Labs to deploy the solution. A user can create a rule-based instruction, such as purchasing gold worth Rs 500 if prices fall below a specified threshold and authorise a UPI mandate. The AI agent can then execute the purchase automatically when the conditions are met.
Earlier in March, Razorpay launched agentic payments for merchants such as the film exhibitor chain PVR. However, it still takes the customer’s final consent before booking the ticket. According to Razorpay, the consent option is to give consumers control over the transaction, rather than a technological challenge.
Pine Labs said the protocol combines UPI mandates with delegated authorisation and identity verification systems provided by Grantex, enabling AI agents to initiate payments while maintaining spending limits, audit trails and revocation controls for users.
Pine Labs said it is also working with retailers and fintech companies on additional deployments. Electronics retailer Vijay Sales is currently running a proof of concept using the protocol. The protocol combines UPI mandate infrastructure with identity verification and authorisation controls provided by Grantex, alongside HTTP 402, an open web standard for machine-readable payment requests.