The much-awaited launch of Unified Agentic Protocol (UAP), a new standard for artificial intelligence-led transactions on UPI, has been temporarily put on hold by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) as it awaits regulatory clearance. According to Business Standard, five people aware of the development confirmed that NPCI is expected to iron out concerns on agentic payments over the next few months before seeking approval again. The decision to hold the launch was communicated to the payments technology industry late Wednesday, with RBI clearance needed for the protocol. As one person quoted by Business Standard explained, "Building the protocol is a process and some concerns have to be ironed out completely before rolling it out. That will happen over the next few months and regulatory approval will be sought."
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has declared UPI as the 'Champion of Fintech Growth' during his address at the seventh edition of the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai. Speaking on Tuesday, Modi emphasized that UPI has completed 10 years of operation and recorded over 2.4 billion (240 crore) transactions last month. As reported by The Hindu BusinessLine, Modi highlighted that UPI is no longer limited to India and is now operational in 11 countries worldwide, with direct UPI transactions between India and Singapore already commenced. The Prime Minister noted that many Indians work abroad and send money home, but a portion of those funds is lost to transfer fees; UPI offers an effective solution to this issue. Modi also cited French President Emmanuel Macron's remarks, stating that UPI was 'not just a tech story but a civilisational story,' adding that the figures reflected India's long journey in digital payments.
WhatsApp has established itself as the seventh-largest UPI player in India, according to Meta's Shweta Bajpai, Director of Finserv, Technology, Services and Payments at Meta. As reported by The Hindu BusinessLine, Bajpai made these remarks during the Global Fintech Fest 2026 on Wednesday. The platform currently offers users the ability to split bills, pay utility bills, set up UPI Lite, and make recurring payments, but Meta sees significant potential for expansion beyond these basic capabilities. Meanwhile, the UPI ecosystem has crossed 24.5 billion transactions in August, demonstrating continued robust growth across the digital payments sector, with NPCI reporting ₹29.82 lakh crore worth of transactions in August, marking its highest monthly volume yet.
The focus on delaying UAP launch centers on user protection, mapping actual risks from potential liabilities when agents go rogue, and governance standards around evolving technologies. As reported by Business Standard, there is a need for appropriate prescribed guidelines for agentic payments for the industry to follow. A second person explained that "A lot of what happens today has been designed keeping human users in mind, including guidelines and regulations. When a new member starts initiating and authorising transactions, we need to have enforceable guidelines for that." The proposed protocol is being designed to create a trusted, common, interoperable infrastructure through which AI agents can be registered, verified, and authorised to transact across the UPI ecosystem without changing the underlying rails of the payments system. With a potential UAP around the corner, low-value, frequent purchases could likely be the first to be automated by users.
Google has previously announced Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), while Pine Labs has already launched its P3P protocol allowing AI agents to complete UPI payments after single upfront authorisation, with Gullak's gold-savings AI agent already using this system. Mastercard completed its first authenticated agentic transaction in New Delhi in June, while Visa is separately building similar capabilities in India. Razorpay has also launched an Agent Studio for merchants in March using Anthropic's Claude Agent SDK. Modi's address stressed that India has taken the fintech journey to new heights, with innovation and inclusion at its core, with the country aiming to extend UPI connectivity to other nations with large Indian populations and significant trade volumes.
