As India positions itself as a global hub for applied AI, OpenAI has teamed up with Pine Labs to embed AI-driven reasoning into the fintech firm’s payments infrastructure. The partnership will integrate OpenAI’s APIs into Pine Labs’ commerce stack to automate settlement, reconciliation and invoicing workflows, aiming to accelerate AI-led commerce across India and overseas markets.
Under the deal, Pine Labs will use OpenAI’s tools to enable AI-assisted settlement and payments orchestration. The collaboration reflects OpenAI’s broader strategy to expand beyond ChatGPT and integrate its models into enterprise, education and digital infrastructure in India, one of its fastest-growing markets. Earlier this week, the company partnered with leading Indian institutions in engineering, medicine and design to introduce AI tools in higher education.
Pine Labs has already deployed AI internally to streamline daily settlements, reducing processing time from hours to minutes, according to CEO B Amrish Rau. The Noida-based fintech previously relied on manual checks by dozens of employees to clear funds from multiple banks before markets opened. Now, AI systems handle most of the process. “People talk about retail AI, but the bigger impact of all of this is really efficiency improvement, especially in B2B,” Rau said. “If you look at invoicing and settlement, those are workflows where agents can actually drive the process end to end and that’s where adoption can happen faster.” The company expects quicker adoption in B2B use cases before consumer-facing payments evolve further.
Rau said agent-led payment workflows are being prototyped in parts of the Middle East and Southeast Asia, while India may see gradual adoption due to tighter payment regulations. The partnership is non-exclusive and does not involve revenue sharing. Pine Labs works with over 980,000 merchants, 716 consumer brands and 177 financial institutions and has processed more than 6 billion transactions worth over ₹11.4 trillion (about $126 billion). Operating in 20 countries including Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, parts of Africa, the UAE and the U.S., Pine Labs is building added security and compliance layers as AI integrates deeper into payments. The announcement comes during the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, where global AI firms are showcasing large-scale applications across finance, healthcare and education.
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