OpenAI has partnered with Indian fintech firm Pine Labs to integrate AI-driven reasoning into the company’s payments and commerce infrastructure, the companies announced Thursday, aiming to automate settlement, reconciliation and invoicing workflows. The integration will embed OpenAI’s APIs directly into Pine Labs’ payments stack, enabling AI-assisted financial processes across its merchant network.
Under the partnership, Pine Labs will use OpenAI’s application programming interfaces to power automated workflows in areas such as settlement processing, invoice management and payments orchestration. The focus will begin with business-to-business use cases, where large volumes of repetitive financial tasks can be handled under predefined rules.
Pine Labs has already deployed AI internally to streamline parts of its daily settlement and reconciliation operations. Chief executive B Amrish Rau said the company previously relied on manual checks by dozens of employees to process funds from multiple banks before markets opened each day — a workflow that now takes minutes rather than hours through AI-driven systems. The new partnership is intended to extend those efficiencies to merchants and corporate clients.
“People talk about retail AI, but the bigger impact of all of this is really efficiency improvement, especially in B2B,” Rau said. He added that AI agents are well suited to invoicing and settlement workflows, where processes can be automated end to end within defined parameters.
Adoption of more autonomous, agent-led payment workflows is expected to move faster in overseas markets where regulations already permit such transactions, Rau said. In India, where payment authorization rules are stricter, the rollout will likely emphasize AI-assisted commerce rather than fully agent-initiated payments. Pine Labs is already prototyping agent-driven payments in parts of the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
The partnership is part of OpenAI’s broader push to expand in India, one of its fastest-growing markets. Earlier this week, the company announced collaborations with leading Indian engineering, medical and design institutions to introduce AI tools into higher education. The Pine Labs deal extends that strategy into India’s enterprise and infrastructure layers.
Pine Labs operates across 20 countries and works with more than 980,000 merchants, 716 consumer brands and 177 financial institutions. According to its prospectus last year, the company has processed over 6 billion transactions worth more than ₹11.4 trillion (about $126 billion). That scale gives OpenAI exposure not only to India’s payments ecosystem but also to international markets where Pine Labs operates.
The agreement does not involve revenue sharing, Rau said. Pine Labs will retain revenues tied to payment services, while OpenAI will collect its own fees related to its technology. The arrangement is also non-exclusive, with Rau comparing it to OpenAI’s partnership with Stripe in the U.S. and noting that Pine Labs remains open to working with other AI providers.
As Pine Labs deepens AI integration, Rau said the company is building additional security and compliance layers to safeguard merchant and consumer data. The emphasis, he added, is on maintaining regulatory compliance even as workflows become more automated.
The announcement comes as India hosts its AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, where global AI companies including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google are showcasing applications across finance, healthcare and education — sectors expected to play a central role in India’s next phase of AI adoption.
This analysis is based on reporting from TechCrunch.
Image courtesy of Pine Labs.
This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.
