Stripe’s UPI glitch mars OpenAI's India plan launch

OpenAI, on August 19, rolled out a new subscription plan called ChatGPT Go exclusively for users in India.

Global fintech giant Stripe’s UPI payment failure has marred ChatGPT’s India-specific payment plan launch on August 19.

The customers trying for UPI payment could not make the payment since the afternoon, and the issues persisted until the time of publishing the story.

“We are currently experiencing an issue processing UPI payments. UPI has been temporarily disabled. We expect to resolve within 12-24 hours,” said a message posted on the website.

Stripe did not immediately respond to Moneycontrol queries on its UPI payment failure.

It is likely that Stripe works with a payment processor in India for the UPI integration and a bank to facilitate the international money transfer.

"It is not clear whether this is a technical issue or a larger operational issue because of the cross-border nature of the payments," said a banker who works with payment companies that enable cross border transactions.

To be sure, the subscription plan payment can be done through credit cards, where the customers can enable recurring payments. However, UPI autopay is currently the most popular recurring payment in India.

Interestingly, Apple allows only UPI Autopay for subscriptions in India after multiple regulatory changes on credit card recurring payments caused big disruptions in subscriptions for its customers.

It is not clear what caused the glitch. Stripe is valued at over 90 billion and has a revenue of around $18 billion annually.

OpenAI, on August 19, rolled out a new subscription plan called ChatGPT Go exclusively for users in India.

The India-specific plan priced at Rs 399 per month is among the company’s most affordable offerings and is designed to provide wider access to popular ChatGPT features at a lower entry cost, including access to the latest GPT 5 model.

The move follows the company’s earlier shift to INR-based billing for subscriptions in the country. Subscriptions are billed monthly, and users can cancel anytime.

The launch comes shortly after OpenAI revised the pricing of its existing plans in India, with Plus costing Rs 1,999 and Pro priced at Rs 19,900 per month. By contrast, the Go plan is positioned as an affordable entry point for individuals who want more access to AI tools without committing to higher-priced tiers.

OpenAI has confirmed that Go will not include connectors, legacy models, or Sora. Instead, it is focused on extended access to GPT-5 and multimodal features at a budget-friendly rate. The company plans to study feedback from India before expanding Go to other markets.