OpenAI deepens India push with Pine Labs fintech partnership

As India pitches itself arsenic a planetary hub for applied artificial intelligence, OpenAI has partnered with Pine Labs to integrate AI-driven reasoning into the fintech firm’s payments stack, automating colony and invoicing workflows successful a determination the companies accidental could assistance accelerate AI-led commerce successful India.

The concern volition spot Pine Labs embed OpenAI’s exertion programming interfaces — bundle tools that fto companies plug AI into their existing systems — wrong its payments and commerce infrastructure, the companies said connected Thursday, each with the purpose of enabling AI-assisted settlement, reconciliation, and invoicing workflows.

The woody underscores OpenAI’s broader propulsion to grow its footprint successful India, one of its fastest-growing markets, arsenic it looks to determination beyond being known chiefly arsenic the shaper of ChatGPT and embed its exertion into education, enterprise, and infrastructure. Earlier this week, OpenAI partnered with starring Indian engineering, medical, and plan institutions to bring AI tools into higher education, betting that India’s ample developer basal and much than a cardinal net users volition play a cardinal relation successful the adjacent signifier of AI adoption.

Pine Labs is already utilizing AI internally to automate parts of its colony and reconciliation process, cutting the clip it takes to wide regular settlements from hours to minutes, according to Chief enforcement B Amrish Rau. The Noida-based institution antecedently relied connected manual checks by dozens of employees to process funds from aggregate banks earlier markets opened each day, a workflow that is present mostly handled by AI-driven systems, helium said successful an interview.

For Pine Labs, the concern is intended to widen those AI-driven efficiencies beyond interior operations to merchants and firm clients, starting with business-to-business usage cases specified arsenic invoice processing, settlements and payments orchestration, Rau told TechCrunch. He noted the institution sees faster adoption successful B2B workflows, wherever AI agents tin grip ample volumes of repetitive fiscal tasks nether predefined rules, earlier akin capabilities scope consumer-facing payments.

“People speech astir retail AI, but the bigger interaction of each of this is truly ratio improvement, particularly successful B2B,” Rau said. “If you look astatine invoicing and settlement, those are workflows wherever agents tin really thrust the process extremity to end, and that’s wherever adoption tin hap faster.”

The rollout of much autonomous, agent-led outgo workflows volition determination faster successful overseas markets wherever regulations already let specified transactions, Rau said, portion India is apt to spot a much gradual adoption focused connected AI-assisted commerce alternatively than afloat agent-initiated payments. He said that Pine Labs is already prototyping agent-driven payments successful parts of the Middle East and Southeast Asia, adjacent arsenic Indian regulations necessitate tighter controls connected however payments are authorized.

For OpenAI, the concern offers a way deeper into India’s payments and endeavor ecosystem arsenic it looks to determination beyond consumer-facing tools and embed its models into high-volume, regulated workflows. Rau said the collaboration is aimed astatine expanding merchant stickiness and expanding Pine Labs’ relation from a payments processor to a broader commerce platform, with higher transaction volumes implicit clip translating into incremental revenue.

Pine Labs says it works with much than 980,000 merchants, 716 user brands, and 177 fiscal institutions, and has processed implicit 6 cardinal cumulative transactions valued astatine implicit ₹11.4 trillion (about $126 billion), per its prospectus published past year. The fintech operates crossed 20 countries, including Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, parts of Africa, the UAE, and the U.S., giving the OpenAI concern scope crossed some Indian and planetary markets.

Rau said the concern does not impact gross sharing betwixt the 2 companies, with Pine Labs not taking a chopped if its merchants take to embed OpenAI’s tools. “We’ve kept it wholly autarkic of each different — thing related to outgo and outgo services, we volition get the payment of it, and thing related to OpenAI revenues volition spell to them,” helium said.

The arrangement, Rau added, is besides non-exclusive. He compared it to OpenAI’s concern with Stripe successful the U.S. and said Pine Labs remains unfastened to moving with different AI providers.

Rau said Pine Labs is gathering further information and compliance layers astir AI-driven workflows to guarantee that delicate merchant and user transaction information remains protected, arsenic the institution integrates AI much profoundly into its payments systems. He said the absorption is connected ensuring transactions stay unafraid and compliant adjacent arsenic much workflows are automated by AI.

Pine Labs’ involvement successful AI-driven commerce builds connected earlier enactment done its Setu unit, which has experimented with agent-led measure outgo experiences utilizing chatbots including ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. Separately, India besides began piloting consumer payments straight done AI chatbots past year.

The caller announcement comes arsenic India hosts its AI Impact Summit successful New Delhi, wherever planetary AI companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are showcasing their latest capabilities alongside Indian startups demonstrating AI applications aimed astatine large-scale deployment crossed sectors specified arsenic finance, healthcare, and education.