Cashfree Payments Launches ‘Cashfree Here’ at India AI Impact Summit

Cashfree Payments has launched Cashfree Here, positioning it as India’s first payments extension designed specifically for AI applications. Announced at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, the solution enables businesses to accept UPI and passkey-based biometric card payments directly within conversational interfaces such as ChatGPT and Claude.

Developed in collaboration with Mastercard and Swiggy, Cashfree Here embeds PCI-compliant checkout natively into AI chat environments, including apps built on OpenAI’s Apps SDK and Anthropic’s MCP framework. The launch builds on Cashfree’s earlier push into agentic payments, where AI agents could facilitate payment conversations. With Cashfree Here, the entire checkout interface is now rendered within chat, enabling end-to-end transactions without redirecting users to external pages.

“Every major shift in commerce has been defined by a new interface from stores to websites to mobile apps. We are now entering the era of AI conversations,” said Nitin Pulyani, SVP and Head of Product at Cashfree Payments. “With Cashfree Here, we are making payments native to AI interactions, allowing businesses to sell and grow in an AI-first world.”

Mastercard is enabling passkey-based biometric authentication for card transactions within AI-native applications, offering an alternative to traditional OTP flows. Gautam Aggarwal, President, India and South Asia, Mastercard, said the collaboration ensures trust remains central as commerce shifts to conversational and AI-driven environments.

Swiggy, which is embedding conversational AI across its food delivery, quick commerce and dining offerings, said seamless payments are critical to preserving user experience in AI-led journeys. “As AI-driven interfaces become more central to everyday commerce, both ordering and payments must remain intuitive and frictionless,” said Madhusudhan Rao, CTO at Swiggy.

As conversational AI adoption grows, payments have largely remained outside chat interfaces, often forcing users to external gateways at the point of highest purchase intent. Cashfree Here aims to close that gap by integrating UPI and card payments directly within AI conversations, with instant confirmations surfaced in-chat.

For businesses, the company says this could translate into higher conversion rates and lower drop-offs, while reducing the technical and compliance burden of building secure payment infrastructure within AI environments.