Paytm plans AI agent push for banks, insurers as it looks beyond payments

Paytm is preparing to sell AI agents to businesses, expanding beyond digital payments into enterprise technology as competition limits growth opportunities in its core market.

The service, called Paytm Intelligence, or Pi, will initially target banks, smaller lenders, insurers and other financial institutions in India and the United Arab Emirates, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the plans.

Pi is designed to deploy AI agents across sales, customer service and operations, allowing companies to automate multi-step tasks with limited human supervision.

Paytm has begun offering the service to a small number of customers and plans to expand it, according to Bloomberg.

After the report was published Wednesday, Sept. 9, parent company One 97 Communications said in a stock-exchange filing that it had been investing in and developing AI capabilities as part of its ongoing business initiatives, including what it has previously described as the potential “revenue monetization journey of AI.”

The company said the Bloomberg report did not relate to any undisclosed material event requiring disclosure under listing rules. Its filing did not confirm or deny the specific plans for Pi reported by Bloomberg.

At the core of the reported service is a financial-services AI model Paytm has been developing for about two years. Bloomberg said the model draws on large numerical datasets accumulated through years of processing financial transactions and analyzing customer behavior and can assess fraud, creditworthiness and the credibility of financial claims.

Paytm plans to combine those capabilities with voice technology and workflow automation. Its agents could assess customer needs, run campaigns, help acquire customers and recommend additional products to existing ones, according to the report.

The effort builds on AI systems Paytm has already developed for its own operations. The company said in its FY26 earnings release that it was building applied AI and smaller language models for payments intelligence, fraud prevention, merchant onboarding and collections, while using agents in software development and other internal functions.

Chief Executive Vijay Shekhar Sharma has also been more explicit about turning AI into a business. On Paytm’s July earnings call, he said the company was working on revenue streams outside payments and financial services and expected AI products eventually to contribute to its Commerce Cloud business. He said some products were already generating small amounts of revenue.

The push comes as Paytm looks for growth beyond India’s crowded digital-payments market, where it competes with PhonePe and Google Pay.

The company has recovered from the disruption that followed regulatory action against Paytm Payments Bank in 2024 and has returned to growth and profitability. In the April-June quarter, operating revenue rose 28% from a year earlier to ₹24.48 billion, while quarterly EBITDA reached a record ₹2.03 billion.

Paytm has also been expanding its workforce around the strategy. Bloomberg reported in June that the company planned to hire about 4,000 people over nine months, largely across its merchant network and AI-focused products.