OpenAI expands its push to India with Pine Labs fintech partnership

As India positions itself as a global hub for artificial intelligence, OpenAI partnered with Pine Labs to integrate AI-driven concepts into the fintech company’s payments, settlement and invoicing processes that the companies say will help advance AI-led commerce in India.

The partnership will see Pine Labs integrate OpenAI integration solutions — software tools that allow companies to integrate AI into their existing systems — within payments and commerce products, the companies said on Thursday, all with the goal of facilitating AI-assisted implementation, reconciliation, and reimbursement services.

The agreement underscores OpenAI’s strong push to expand coverage in India, one of its fastest growing marketssince it seems that it will continue to be known mainly as a developer of ChatGPT and put its expertise in education, business, and construction. Earlier this week, OpenAI partnered with India’s leading engineers, healthcare, and design organizations bring AI tools to higher educationbetting that India’s biggest developers and over one billion internet users will play a major role in the next phase of AI adoption.

Pine Labs is already using AI internally to improve its standard settings and reconciliations, cutting the time it takes to complete daily routines from hours to minutes, according to Chief Executive Officer B Amrish Rau. The Noida-based company previously relied on manual checks and large staff to process funds from multiple banks before the markets opened each day, a process that is now being used more and more with AI-driven systems, he said in an interview.

For Pine Labs, the partnership should expand AI-driven functionality beyond internal tasks for merchants and corporate customers, starting with business use cases such as invoice processing, invoicing and payments, Rau told TechCrunch. He added that the company is seeing rapid adoption in B2B processes, where AI agents can handle many financial transactions repeatedly according to pre-defined rules, before the matching capabilities reach the payments that consumers are facing.

“People talk about sales AI, but the biggest impact of all of this is better management, especially in B2B,” Rau said. “When you look at invoicing and implementation, these are the channels where agents can drive the project to completion, and that’s where adoption can happen faster.”

The roll-out of autonomous, assistant-led vehicles will accelerate in foreign markets where regulations already allow for it, Rau said, while India should see a gradual rollout focusing on AI-assisted sales rather than upfront fees. He added that Pine Labs is already paying for sponsored payments in other parts of the Middle East and Southeast Asia, as India’s laws require stricter controls on how payments are accepted.

For OpenAI, this partnership provides a deeper path into India’s payments and business ecosystem as it looks to move beyond consumer-facing tools and deploy its models in a more sophisticated, regulated environment. Rau said the deal is aimed at increasing merchant engagement and expanding Pine Labs’ role from a payment processor to a merchant platform, with increased volume over time translating into additional revenue.

Pine Labs says works with over 980,000 merchants716 consumer brands, and 177 financial institutions, and has processed more than 6 billion transactions worth more than ₹ 11.4 trillion (about $126 billion), according to data published last year. Fintech operates in 20 countries, including Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, parts of Africa, the UAE, and the US, giving the OpenAI partnership access to both Indian and foreign markets.

Rau said the deal did not include revenue sharing between the two companies, with Pine Labs not taking a cut if its customers choose to deploy OpenAI tools. “We have kept it independent of each other – everything related to the payment and payment, we will get the profit, and everything related to the OpenAI money will go to them,” he said.

Arrangements, Rau added, are also not alone. He compared it to OpenAI’s partnership with Stripe in the US and said Pine Labs remains open to working with other AI providers.

Rau said Pine Labs is developing additional layers of security and tracking around AI-driven journeys to ensure consumer-focused transactions remain secure, as the company integrates AI deeply into its payment systems. He added that the aim is to ensure that transactions remain secure and consistent despite the fact that many services are powered by AI.

Pine Labs’ interest in AI-driven marketing builds on previous work through its Setu division, which is tested the agent-led bill payment experience using chatbots including ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. On its own, India also started flying direct purchase payments through AI chatbots last year.

The new announcement comes as India is doing AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, where international AI companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are showcasing their latest innovations alongside Indian startups showcasing AI applications aimed at large-scale deployment in sectors such as finance, healthcare, and education.