What NPCI's agent registry means, and what it leaves open

Picture an assistant app that looks after one person's errands. On Monday it reorders her groceries and pays over UPI. On Thursday it writes to a hospital to move her check-up to Friday. Same assistant, same person, two very different front doors.

The first door is the one India is reportedly building a registry for. The second is a door nobody has described yet. That gap is what this piece is about.

The reports so far

On 1 September 2026, Reuters reported that three people familiar with the matter said India was preparing a framework that would let AI agents make small payments on UPI without approval for each one. We read the copy The Star ran that day. Early uses, it says, would likely be low-value and frequent, groceries being the example. It adds that NPCI plans to build in "a liability framework" but gave no details. NPCI hadn't responded to Reuters.

On 10 September Reuters followed up with a story about a registry. We couldn't open that one directly, so we read it as relayed by TechNode, which ran its version on 12 September. As TechNode tells it, the registry would verify and monitor AI agents that pay over UPI, as part of a planned "Unified Agentic Protocol". It would begin with UPI and could later stretch to cards and bill payments.

Then came a wrinkle. Business Standard reported on 11 September, citing five people aware of the development, that the launch planned for Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai had been put on hold while NPCI waits for regulatory clearance. It says clearance from the Reserve Bank of India is needed. It also says the work is focused on user protection and on the risk when agents "go rogue". Part of that article is behind a paywall, and we read the part that was open to us.

So the plain summary is this. A registry is reportedly being built. As of those reports it hadn't launched, and it was waiting on the regulator. Liability was still being worked out.

We looked for NPCI's own words. The NPCI press release from 10 September covers other launches and doesn't mention agents. We haven't found a document from NPCI that describes the registry.

The gaps in those reports

Go back to the assistant. On Monday a payment network wants to know which agent is paying, who authorised it, and within what limits. A registry for UPI, as reported, is aimed at exactly that.

Thursday is different. Nothing in the pieces we read touches a hospital, a tax portal or any office outside payments. The reports are about payments and, later, cards and bill payments. That's reasonable. A body that runs payments building something for payments is what you'd expect.

But it leaves some questions open. Who outside the payment network can look at an entry? If the registry is meant for the parties on UPI, a hospital may never be able to see it. What does an entry vouch for? One report speaks of approved software and its operators, and none says what is checked about the operator. And what should an assistant do when two sectors each keep a registry of their own?

Where two registries could meet

This section is our argument, not anything reported.

A hospital doesn't care about payment limits. It cares who answers for the thing writing to it. A payments registry, as described, records the operator behind an approved agent. So the fact that matters most to both sides is the same one: the party behind the agent.

That suggests the two should recognise each other at the level of the operator and the agent, and not by merging into one. Each keeps its own rules. An agent would carry whatever each registry has issued it, and an office in one sector could see that an entry elsewhere points to the same operator. Whether it trusts the checks made by the other registry is that office's call, and its regulator's.

There are harder parts. If an operator was vetted for handling money, does a hospital accept that for bookings? Probably not entirely, since a hospital may want to see other things. And who settles it when two entries disagree about the same agent? We don't have answers, and they aren't ours alone to give.

If you want the longer version of why one company's directory can't serve an outside office, we wrote it up in Why an agent registry has to live outside any one company. For the basics of what an identity record holds, start with What is agent identity?.

Where we stand

We're setting up a non-profit. It isn't incorporated yet, and it has no members. Its aim is to register the individual, company or institution behind each agent, check their documents and the agent's details, and issue the agent an identity. Checking an agent's identity is meant to work offline, through an SDK.

Saakshya has no relationship with NPCI. NPCI has not endorsed us, and neither has the Reserve Bank of India or any other regulator. We aren't a regulator ourselves. We're reading the same news that you can.

What we don't know

We don't know whether the registry exists in the form the reports describe. The sources are unnamed, and NPCI hadn't commented in the pieces we read. We haven't seen it launched.

We don't know what the name is. Reuters' first story, as The Star carried it, says "Unified Agent Protocol". Later pieces say "Unified Agentic Protocol". We can't tell which is current, or whether it matters.

We don't know who carries the loss if an agent pays for the wrong thing. Every report we read says that question is still open.

And we don't know whether anyone outside payments will ever be able to look an agent up in it. If you work at a hospital, a tax office or a bank and you'd want that, tell us. It would help us to know which sectors feel the gap.