GFF 2026 | Razorpay bets AI agents will change how Indians shop and pay

Artificial intelligence could change how Indians shop and transact, with AI agents allowing consumers to interact in their own voice and language and complete transactions, according to Razorpay Co-Founder and CEO Harshil Mathur.

Speaking to CNBC-TV18 on the sidelines of the Global Fintech Festival 2026, Mathur said agentic commerce could transform the way commerce is conducted in India, much as UPI changed the way payments are made.

“The way we saw UPI shift the way payments are done in this country, I believe agentic will change the way commerce gets done in this country. It's the next big trend that's going to—and India's going to leapfrog the world in it,” he said.

Razorpay has built infrastructure that allows merchants to develop applications using AI agents, Mathur said. Some merchants have already seen early traction, although he stressed that the technology is still at an early stage and has significant room to develop.

Why agentic commerce could be a big opportunity

Mathur said a large part of India remains outside online commerce because consumers may prefer to communicate in their own voice and language, something he said standard app interfaces do not readily allow.

“Agents allow people to talk in their own voice, talk in their own language, and complete a transaction. I think it's a massive opportunity,” he said.

Mathur said this more natural way of interacting with technology could bring more consumers into online commerce and create a new way to complete digital transactions.

For Razorpay, agentic commerce is part of a broader effort to apply AI beyond traditional payments. Mathur said the company is exploring how newer technologies can improve business processes and enable new use cases.

Razorpay sees fintech opportunity beyond payments

Mathur said India's fintech ecosystem has made significant progress over the past decade, but believes much of the opportunity remains untapped.

“We're not done. We're less than 1% done. There's so much opportunity,” he said.

He said the first wave of fintech was largely about access — enabling people to pay, buy stocks and access loans online. As the market has expanded, fintech companies can now move towards more specialised and complex products for specific customer segments.

Razorpay, which focuses on digital businesses, is looking to move deeper into merchants' operations, including checkout and other day-to-day processes.

The company launched Agent Studio earlier this year, allowing small businesses to deploy AI agents on top of Razorpay to handle routine tasks.

Mathur also sees AI creating scope for greater personalisation in financial services, including lending. He said businesses could use AI to tailor financial products to individual customers rather than offering the same products to everyone.

Razorpay puts AI to work in payments

Razorpay is also using AI in its core payments business through Vulcan, a foundational model that the company has built specifically for payments.

Mathur said Razorpay receives about 3,000 signals for every payment and has trained Vulcan on about 4 billion transactions, using roughly 1 trillion signals.

The model is being used to improve payment success rates, reduce fraud and international chargebacks, and improve personalisation, Mathur said.

According to Mathur, Razorpay has seen a 4% to 8% improvement in payment success rates, a fourfold reduction in fraud, an eightfold reduction in international chargebacks and a 30% improvement in personalisation after deploying the model.

He said Vulcan can continue to improve as it learns from transactions, potentially pushing payment failures and fraud rates closer to zero over time.

Indian fintech companies need to look global

Mathur said India has the potential to produce multiple $100 billion fintech companies, but argued that businesses will need to look beyond the domestic market to reach that scale.

Such companies would need to operate across multiple markets while staying ahead of global peers on technology, he said.

Razorpay is already present in Malaysia and Singapore and plans to expand further across Southeast Asia, Mathur said.

He believes India's experience with real-time payments gives domestic fintech companies an opportunity to take their capabilities to other markets as digital payments expand globally.

“Look outside, capture that value, and don't limit yourself by geography,” Mathur said.