OpenAI is expanding its presence in India through a strategic partnership with Pine Labs, a leading fintech company, to integrate AI-driven reasoning into its payments and commerce infrastructure. The collaboration aims to automate key financial workflows such as settlement, reconciliation, and invoicing, marking a significant step toward AI-powered commerce in India. Under the agreement, Pine Labs will embed OpenAI’s application programming interfaces into its existing systems to enable AI-assisted processing of high-volume business-to-business transactions. This move builds on Pine Labs’ existing use of AI internally, where it has already reduced daily settlement times from hours to minutes by replacing manual checks with automated systems. Pine Labs CEO B Amrish Rau emphasized that the initial focus will be on B2B operations, where repetitive, rule-based financial tasks are ideal for AI agents. He noted that while consumer-facing AI payments may take longer to roll out due to regulatory constraints in India, B2B workflows are primed for faster adoption. The company is already testing agent-driven payment systems in markets like the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where regulations are more flexible. For OpenAI, the partnership represents a shift from its consumer-focused image as the creator of ChatGPT toward deeper integration into enterprise and infrastructure systems. By embedding its AI tools into a high-volume payments platform, OpenAI gains access to a large-scale, real-world environment to refine its models and demonstrate practical value in regulated sectors. Pine Labs operates across 20 countries, serves over 980,000 merchants, 716 brands, and 177 financial institutions, and has processed more than 6 billion transactions worth over ₹11.4 trillion ($126 billion). The company sees the AI integration as a way to increase merchant engagement and evolve from a payments processor into a full-fledged commerce platform. The collaboration is non-exclusive and does not involve revenue sharing. Pine Labs will retain all revenue from payment services, while OpenAI will earn directly from its own AI tool usage. The company remains open to working with other AI providers, similar to OpenAI’s partnership with Stripe in the U.S. Security and compliance remain top priorities. Pine Labs is developing additional safeguards to protect sensitive transaction data as it expands AI use across its systems. The move aligns with India’s broader push to become a global hub for applied AI, highlighted by the ongoing AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, where global tech firms and Indian startups are showcasing AI innovations in finance, healthcare, and education. The partnership reflects growing momentum in India’s AI ecosystem, where both domestic and international players are investing in AI-driven solutions tailored to local markets and regulatory environments.