In a move that could redefine how digital payments are executed in India's fast-evolving fintech landscape, Infibeam Avenues Ltd has developed India's first agentic payment platform -- PayCentral, through its AI deep research company, Phronetic AI.
The platform, according to a senior company executive who spoke on condition of anonymity, enables Agent-to-Agent (A2A) digital payment transactions, allowing artificial intelligence agents to execute and manage payments without human involvement.
Built as an intelligent payment infrastructure layer, PayCentral is designed to integrate seamlessly with payment gateway providers such as CCAvenue, Stripe, PhonePe, and others, enabling their merchant networks the ability to deliver faster, automated, and more intelligent consumer payment checkout experiences.
"PayCentral is the first of its kind in India--an autonomous system where AI agents can negotiate, initiate, and settle payments in real time," the executive said. As per the executive, the system can cater those sectors which has strong digital customer identities--such as travel, OTT subscriptions, insurance, and financial services--where instant payment completion directly correlates with higher sales conversion.
"These are sectors where customers already have verified digital addresses, such as mobile numbers and email IDs," the executive explained. "PayCentral allows AI agents to use these verified identities to conclude payment transactions instantly, enabling businesses to achieve faster closures and higher transaction success rates."
Infibeam did not respond to a request for an official comment at the time of publication.
The company's timing appears aligned with India's booming digital services economy. According to Research and Markets, the country's digital insurance market is projected to grow from USD 2.09 billion in 2025 to USD 3.71 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 12.2%. Similarly, Mordor Intelligence forecasts the online travel market to expand from USD 23.1 billion in 2025 to USD 33.9 billion by 2030, while Grand View Research projects online movie ticketing revenues to reach USD 4.75 billion by 2030, growing at 8.6% annually.
In recent years, players from banking, financial services, insurance, and digital booking space has been increasingly relying on messaging platforms like WhatsApp to distribute digital offers directly to customers. Yet, these efforts often stall at the point of purchase. "The offer reaches the customer, but the transaction doesn't translates into business," says the source. "There's no fully automated payment option that can take the customer from interest to checkout seamlessly."
"That's where PayCentral fits in," the source said. "PayCentral closes the last-mile gap by enabling a merchant's shopping assistant AI agent to communicate directly with a payment gateway's AI agent -- completing checkout and payments seamlessly, with minimal customer intervention, except for a few customer's consent."
Technically, PayCentral is built on Google's Agent Payment Protocol (AP2) and operates atop multiple Payment Aggregators' Model Context Protocols (MCPs), creating a unified, autonomous, and auditable payment layer. This architecture allows AI agents to dynamically generate payment links, process refunds, manage recurring subscriptions, and reconcile accounts in real time--all autonomously.
According to the source, CCAvenue, one of India's leading payment gateways and also a brand of Infibeam Avenues, is already in the process of integrating PayCentral into its ecosystem, a move that would bring A2A payment capabilities to thousands of merchants nationwide.
Industry analysts say the rise of agentic AI -- systems capable of reasoning, negotiating, and acting independently -- could fundamentally alter how digital commerce operates. As AI-driven "shopping assistants" handle everything from product discovery to logistics, the ability to autonomously conclude payments may become a critical component of next-generation commerce platforms and for digital sales focused companies.
"If successful, PayCentral could mark a turning point in India's digital payments evolution," the executive said. "It's a step toward a world where AI systems not only communicate but also transact -- securely, instantly, and intelligently."
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