PayU launches Agent HQ to help Indian SMBs sell through AI platforms

New no-code tool lets small businesses list products on ChatGPT, Claude and WhatsApp as AI-driven shopping tools reshape how consumers search, compare and buy, reducing dependence on traditional search-based marketing.

Fintech major PayU has rolled out a new platform, Agent HQ, designed to help small and medium businesses in India tap into the growing wave of AI-driven shopping. The tool allows merchants to plug their products into AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Claude, as well as WhatsApp, without writing any code or setting up separate technical integrations.

The company pointed to industry data suggesting that nearly half of all search activity is now migrating toward AI-based agents, and that purchases originating from such agents convert at rates up to three times higher than conventional channels. PayU positioned Agent HQ as a way for smaller merchants to get ahead of this shift instead of relying solely on legacy search engines and digital ads.

Custom chat assistants for shoppers

Beyond simple product listings, the platform lets businesses build their own branded conversational assistants. These bots can be embedded across a merchant's website or app to respond to customer questions instantly and manage queries that arise after a sale, such as order tracking or returns.

This customer-facing layer is only one part of a broader toolkit PayU is offering — the rest is geared toward automating back-end operational work merchants typically handle manually.

Automating back-office tasks

Within Agent HQ, merchants can assign agents to jobs like chasing pending transactions, sorting out chargebacks, managing refund disputes, and tracking settlements. Business owners choose which agent to activate, decide how often it runs, and track its output directly from PayU's dashboard.

PayU said these agents can also mine a merchant's own transaction history — covering payment success and failure trends, chargeback patterns, settlement timelines and buyer behaviour — to suggest ideas for future marketing or sales pushes.

Because the system is built directly into PayU's existing merchant dashboard, businesses can turn on an agent in a few clicks, set its schedule, and get updates via email or WhatsApp. The company emphasised that merchants stay in control of what each agent is permitted to do, keeping a check on the scope of automated actions taken on their behalf.

Built on an existing merchant base

Agent HQ extends a payments network that already serves upwards of 450,000 merchants and has processed roughly Rs 7,800 billion in transactions while supporting over 700 million shopper interactions, according to PayU. Early adopters named by the company include Policybazaar, Daily Objects and Pinq Polka.

With the launch, PayU is positioning itself beyond its core payments business and into AI-driven merchant services — a bet that as shopping shifts from typed search queries to conversational AI agents, having early access to those channels could prove decisive for smaller sellers competing online.