OpenAI’s artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT is once again facing glitches with UPI payments, second in recent months, as the company kicks off its one-year free promotional offer on its entry-level tier - ChatGPT Go - in India.
Indian users of the wildly popular AI chatbot said they have experienced payment issues with the UPI option.
The ChatGPT Go subscription page, powered by global fintech major Stripe, asks customers to approve their UPI payment request but the webpage gets stuck for more than 30 minutes, which should otherwise take less than 30 seconds.
This has been reported even after customers approved the Autopay request within the UPI app. The user does not receive any further communication or does not have a subscribe or continue option. Moneycontrol has been able to replicate this error.
OpenAI's recent UPI partnership
Card payments, however, are working fine through the recurring payment method with a token payment for enabling the mandate, which is refunded by the bank later.
Moneycontrol has written to OpenAI and the story will be updated when we get a response from the company.
Last month, Razorpay, NPCI, which runs UPI, and OpenAI had joined hands to pilot ‘Agentic Payments’ on ChatGPT.
The initiative, currently in pilot stage, is expected to enable users to discover products and services, compare prices, and make payments through UPI without leaving the ChatGPT interface.
How does a free subscription work?
Only the first year is free, and to avail the subscription, consumers have to give a recurring payments mandate to deduct money from second year onwards.
Both card and UPI payments are shown as approved payment methods in the payments page.
The free subscription rollout aims to consolidate ChatGPT’s India footprint in the fast-growing AI market.
The company is competing with tech giants like Google and Perplexity, both of which recently introduced similar free access for their premium AI tools. OpenAI is hoping that this initiative will encourage a broader adoption of advanced AI capabilities across businesses, students, and professionals in India.
India plan launch and the earlier UPI failure
OpenAI had launched the India-specific ChatGPT Go plan two months ago at Rs 399 per month. However, the launch too also marred by UPI payment issues at Stripe. “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 on August 19.
Moneycontrol had reported that there could be an operational issue because of the cross-border nature of the payment.
Stripe likely works with a payment processor in India for the UPI integration and a bank to facilitate the international money transfer.
UPI Autopay
UPI autopay is currently the most popular recurring payment in India, cornering around 70 percent of all such payments.
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.
India has emerged as one of OpenAI’s fastest-growing markets and is now the second-largest market for ChatGPT with over 800 million users globally. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had recently said that India could soon become ChatGPT’s largest market. The new promotion is expected to further accelerate adoption in India.
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