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India's e-commerce wave is entering its next phase as agentic AI makes its way to UPI transactions. Pine Labs, a merchant commerce platform, launched a payment protocol, P3P, allowing the completion of a UPI payment without any human authentication.
The P3P payment protocol works by extending the UPI's existing mandate into payments triggered by AI agents. "The consumer authorises once, upfront. After that, the agent browses, selects, negotiates, and pays. No human authentication. No interruption. No friction," the company said. The global agentic commerce market is projected to grow to USD65.47 billion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 35.7% (Grand View Research, 2025). With the launch of the payment protocol, India is well poised to be at the centre of this boom. An agent securing a flash sale the moment it goes live. A down payment locked in before inventory disappears. A savings trigger at the right price. These are new behaviours, native to how India transacts. Pine Labs is building the commerce infrastructure for that world. Not catching up to anyone. Building ahead," Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs, said. The P3P protocol lets an AI agent authenticate a transaction on a user's behalf. The protocol provides payment and settlement rails while Grantex provides verifiable identity, delegated authorization, spend controls and auditability. Together with HTTP 402 that allows a standardised protocol for discovering and requesting payment, the entire framework enables trusted, secure, and auditable agent-to-agent transactions on behalf of merchants without requiring human intervention. The P3P has been anchored on the UPI's Single Block Multiple Debit (SBMD) and One Time Mandate (OTM) frameworks. "By anchoring P3P onto this architecture, Pine Labs keeps the consumer in absolute control -- authorising a single mandate upfront, with Grantex ensuring the AI stays within its bounds," the company said. Digital gold savings platform Gullak is live on P3P allowing users to use its AI agent to make purchases if the gold hits their target price. "With P3P, we are moving from manual savings to autonomous wealth creation. Pine Labs has built the infrastructure to make this possible," Manthan Shah, Co-founder, Gullak, said. (ANI)
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