Pine Labs, a major merchant payments provider, announced a partnership with OpenAI on Thursday to embed advanced AI directly into its core infrastructure. AI agents will handle complex workflows, from negotiating supplier terms to streamlining recurring bill payments, all within user-defined safety limits, according to a joint statement.

The setup splits responsibilities clearly. OpenAI supplies the reasoning and decision-making power. Pine Labs manages the actual transactions, regulatory compliance and execution through its established payment rails.

B Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs, described the shift as major. ‘For decades, commerce has been built on passive systems that simply follow instructions,’ he said in the statement. ‘At Pine Labs, we are moving beyond that era to build an active, intelligent layer for business.’

Rau went further, positioning the collaboration as a game-changer for global trade. ‘Our work with OpenAI ensures that our infrastructure is no longer just a participant in a trade, but a driver of efficiency and growth,’ he added. ‘We are building the first agentic stack for the next generation of the global economy.’

The integration introduces a ‘reasoning layer’ to commerce operations. Systems will interpret context, evaluate options and make probabilistic judgments. Pine Labs emphasized security features, including data isolation, encryption and mandatory human oversight for sensitive actions.

Third-party developers gain access too. Pine Labs plans to open the agentic stack to outside builders, letting them create AI-powered fintech apps on its platform.

Oliver Jay, OpenAI’s Managing Director for International, highlighted the partnership’s potential. ‘The next phase of AI is about moving from information to action,’ he said. By pairing OpenAI’s reasoning tech with Pine Labs’ merchant network, ‘we are helping to create a powerful engine for innovation that turns complex financial workflows into smooth, agentic experiences at scale.’

The deal emerged at the India AI Impact Summit 2026. It coincides with Cashfree Payments revealing ‘Cashfree Here,’ billed as India’s first payments extension for AI apps. The Bengaluru firm targets conversational platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.

Cashfree Here lets businesses process UPI and card payments right inside chat interfaces. No redirects to separate pages required. It integrates natively with OpenAI’s Apps SDK and Anthropic’s MCP framework, the company stated.

These announcements signal a rush among Indian fintechs to fuse payments with AI. Pine Labs and Cashfree aim to make financial tools as intuitive as everyday chatbots, potentially changing how merchants and consumers handle money worldwide.