OpenAI has partnered with Pine Labs to integrate AI-driven reasoning into the fintech firm’s payments stack, automating settlement and invoicing workflows.
This move is part of OpenAI’s broader push to expand its footprint in India, one of its fastest-growing markets, as it looks to move beyond being known primarily as the maker of ChatGPT.
Pine Labs will embed OpenAI’s application programming interfaces within its payments and commerce infrastructure, enabling AI-assisted settlement, reconciliation, and invoicing workflows.
The Partnership
The partnership will help accelerate AI-led commerce in India, with Pine Labs already using AI internally to automate parts of its settlement and reconciliation process, cutting the time it takes to clear daily settlements from hours to minutes.
According to Chief Executive B Amrish Rau, 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 is now largely handled by AI-driven systems.
Market Context
Pine Labs works with more than 980,000 merchants, 716 consumer brands, and 177 financial institutions, and has processed over 6 billion cumulative transactions valued at over ₹11.4 trillion (about $126 billion).
The fintech operates across 20 countries, including Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, parts of Africa, the UAE, and the U.S., giving the OpenAI partnership reach across both Indian and international markets.
What This Means for the Industry
The rollout of more autonomous, agent-led payment workflows will move faster in overseas markets where regulations already allow such transactions, while India is likely to see a more gradual adoption focused on AI-assisted commerce rather than fully agent-initiated payments.
As reported by TechCrunch, OpenAI has also partnered with leading Indian engineering, medical, and design institutions to bring AI tools into higher education, betting that India’s large developer base and more than a billion internet users will play a central role in the next phase of AI adoption.
