Razorpay Deploys Agentic Payments for E-Commerce
Razorpay has announced the deployment of agentic payments integrated with Claude AI for major e-commerce platforms Zomato, Swiggy, and Zepto. This implementation signals the real-world use of AI agents for handling complex, multi-step e-commerce workflows. The announcement highlights a practical business application of agentic systems in a high-volume consumer environment.
- The underlying technology combines Razorpay's payment infrastructure, the National Payments Corporation of India's (NPCI) UPI rails, and Anthropic's Claude AI for conversational intelligence. This collaboration was unveiled at the India AI Impact Summit on February 20, 2026. - The system utilizes "UPI Reserve Pay," which allows users to pre-approve a spending limit for a specific merchant. This enables the AI agent to complete multiple purchases on the user's behalf without requiring a PIN for each transaction, while users retain control with real-time visibility and the ability to revoke consent instantly. - This initiative represents an expansion of Razorpay's strategy in AI-native commerce, following a similar agentic payments collaboration with OpenAI announced at the Global Fintech Fest in 2025. The current pilot with Claude adds Anthropic as a second major AI partner. - Agentic payments are designed to let AI systems autonomously initiate and execute transactions without direct human intervention at checkout. This moves beyond simple automation to handle multi-step commercial tasks like product discovery, price comparison, and final purchase within a single conversational flow. - Razorpay has been building its AI capabilities through strategic acquisitions, including the 2019 purchase of Thirdwatch, an AI platform for real-time fraud prevention in e-commerce. This was followed by the acquisition of TERA Finlabs in 2021, an AI-based risk tech SaaS platform. - The broader payment industry is preparing for a shift towards agentic commerce, with major players like Mastercard ("Agent Pay") and Visa ("Intelligent Commerce" Initiative) developing frameworks for AI-driven transactions. The market for agentic commerce is projected to grow significantly, sitting at the intersection of the AI agent and digital payments industries. - For the pilot, the choice of Zomato, Swiggy, and Zepto is strategic, as these high-frequency platforms handle daily, time-sensitive, and often repetitive consumer decisions, making them an ideal testing ground for scaling agent-led commerce. - Claude AI, developed by Anthropic, is leveraged for its advanced natural language processing to understand user intent, analyze preferences, and manage the conversational purchasing journey. Its capabilities in data analysis and task automation are key to enabling the AI to handle the complexities of e-commerce transactions from start to finish.
