What is the story about?
Cashfree Payments on Tuesday, February 17, launched “Cashfree Here”, an in-chat payments extension developed in collaboration with Mastercard and Swiggy, enabling businesses to accept UPI and card payments directly within AI applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.
Unveiled at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, the solution allows users to complete transactions inside conversational interfaces without being redirected to external payment pages. The company said the extension addresses a key gap in AI-led commerce, where discovery and recommendations happen within chat, but payments typically require switching platforms.
The offering supports UPI and card payments embedded natively into AI conversations built on OpenAI’s Apps SDK and Anthropic’s MCP framework. For card transactions, Mastercard enables passkey-based biometric authentication, replacing traditional OTP-based verification with device-level biometric validation.
For consumers, the integration could mean completing purchases—such as food delivery or other services—within the same AI chat window where they search and decide.
For businesses, the company said it reduces integration complexity and may help improve conversion rates by lowering checkout friction.
Cashfree said the system is PCI-compliant and built on its existing payments infrastructure. The launch follows its earlier rollout of “Agentic Payments”, which allows AI agents to manage payment conversations on behalf of merchants.
Founded in 2015, Cashfree processes about $80 billion in transactions annually for over one million businesses. It is authorised by the Reserve Bank of India to operate as a payment aggregator for domestic and cross-border payments.
As conversational AI gains traction across commerce use cases, embedding payments directly into chat interfaces could become a key development in India’s digital payments landscape.
ALSO READ | Paisabazaar launches bill payments, mobile recharge on app: How to use the feature
Unveiled at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, the solution allows users to complete transactions inside conversational interfaces without being redirected to external payment pages. The company said the extension addresses a key gap in AI-led commerce, where discovery and recommendations happen within chat, but payments typically require switching platforms.
The offering supports UPI and card payments embedded natively into AI conversations built on OpenAI’s Apps SDK and Anthropic’s MCP framework. For card transactions, Mastercard enables passkey-based biometric authentication, replacing traditional OTP-based verification with device-level biometric validation.
For consumers, the integration could mean completing purchases—such as food delivery or other services—within the same AI chat window where they search and decide.
For businesses, the company said it reduces integration complexity and may help improve conversion rates by lowering checkout friction.
Cashfree said the system is PCI-compliant and built on its existing payments infrastructure. The launch follows its earlier rollout of “Agentic Payments”, which allows AI agents to manage payment conversations on behalf of merchants.
Founded in 2015, Cashfree processes about $80 billion in transactions annually for over one million businesses. It is authorised by the Reserve Bank of India to operate as a payment aggregator for domestic and cross-border payments.
As conversational AI gains traction across commerce use cases, embedding payments directly into chat interfaces could become a key development in India’s digital payments landscape.
ALSO READ | Paisabazaar launches bill payments, mobile recharge on app: How to use the feature
