India, June 27 -- Amid intensifying competition in the payment aggregator space, Indian fintech startups are jumping on to the agentic AI bandwagon and eyeing AI-readiness to retain merchants and online marketplaces.

Specifically, PAs such as Razorpay, Cashfree and PayU have integrated model context protocol (MCP) standards to create agent-like functionality for merchants on their payment gateways and settlement platforms.

MCP is a standard developed by Silicon Valley AI giant Anthropic to standardise how AI models interact with external tools, systems, and data sources. Leveraging MCP standards means the likes of Razorpay, Cashfree, PhonePe and others can connect LLMs to their proprietary data sources and offer seamless services for PA...