India moves toward letting AI agents make UPI payments without per-transaction approval

India’s Unified Payments Interface, already the world’s highest-volume real-time payments network, is being prepared to support a new category of user: autonomous AI agents. Regulators and infrastructure operators are working through a framework that would let AI agents initiate digital payments over UPI without requiring a human to approve every individual transaction.

The scale involved is significant — UPI processed tens of billions of transactions worth several hundred billion dollars in a single recent month — which means even a modest share of agent-initiated volume would represent an enormous real-world test of autonomous financial transactions. A parallel push from banking-sector leaders for a “Know Your Agent” framework, modelled on existing Know Your Customer rules but applied to AI systems rather than people, reflects how seriously regulators are taking the identity and accountability questions this raises.

The shift is being framed by officials as the natural next step after several years of AI recommending purchases or flagging transactions — moving from AI that advises to AI that acts, with all the additional trust, security and liability questions that transition implies.