India’s NPCI takes part in two innovative payment initiatives

Details: Vaughan O'Grady; Category: Consumer Ecosystems; 14 October 2025; 5292 views

It’s been a busy time for cashless payments in India, with two big announcements in the past week involving the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India.

The most recent news comes from Muse Wearables, an Indian tech startup, which has collaborated with NPCI to roll out the country’s inaugural wearable payment ecosystem.

The Electronic Payments International website reports that this system is said to be powered by Muse Wallet, a deeptech payment platform, in conjunction with the RuPay network of NPCI.

The platform enables consumers to conduct payments instantaneously by using Muse’s smart ring (Ring One, a compact wearable electronic device) at near field communication (NFC)-compatible point-of-sale terminals, bypassing the necessity for physical wallets, cards or mobile phones.

Operational in over 40 nations and accommodating cards from around 600 banks, Muse Wallet is now expanding its reach to the Indian market via the RuPay network.

The initiative, Electronic Payments International says, is set to expand secure digital payment options to users, including those residing in smaller cities.

Muse Wearables has initiated the process of incorporating issuing banks into the Muse Wallet ecosystem and plans to support all issuers in India to make this payment method widely available.

Muse Wearables, which maintains operations in the US, Europe, and other regions, claims to have a deep tech team of 200 people dedicated to creating and manufacturing products.

This news follows the announcement last week that NPCI has partnered with fintech company Razorpay and OpenAI to introduce a pilot programme for AI-driven payments on ChatGPT.

Agentic AI payments, as the programme is known, allows users to make purchases directly through ChatGPT, using India’s domestic payments network, called unified payments interface (UPI).

Reuters says the pilot follows leading AI companies, including Google and Perplexity AI, launching their versions of AI-enabled payment services earlier this year.

Agentic AI works on AI models that require minimal human intervention to complete tasks and enable users to complete transactions without leaving the AI platforms.

The pilot aims to explore how this service can be extended across various sectors and to assess the feasibility of enabling AI agents to perform transactions autonomously while maintaining user security and control.