National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has partnered with US-based semiconductor company NVIDIA to scale its sovereign AI model capabilities for digital payments ecosystem.

In a statement, NPCI, which oversees retail payments and settlement systems in India, said the initiative is part of its ongoing AI programme. The focus includes grievance redressal, data sovereignty and AI-led development across payment workflows.

As part of the engagement, NPCI will use NVIDIA Nemotron in its model development work. The collaboration will seek to develop a “payments-native AI foundation model” that aligns with India’s regulatory and data sovereignty requirements.

NVIDIA Nemotron is positioned as a family of open models, datasets and technologies used to build agentic AI systems.

The announcement follows NPCI’s launch of FiMI (Finance Model for India), a domain-specific language model designed for India’s payments environment. NPCI developed FiMI in-house and said it addresses limitations seen in general-purpose large language models when applied to high-scale payment workflows.

FiMI currently powers NPCI’s UPI Help Assistant, which supports grievance resolution for Unified Payments Interface (UPI) users.

In the next phase of its AI work, NPCI intends to move beyond use-case-specific agents towards a foundational AI layer for the payment ecosystem.

The proposed model will explore approaches such as Mixture of Experts (MoE) to support high-volume, low-latency payment environments. NPCI also plans to expand capabilities across multilingual datasets and agent-optimised systems.

Over time, NPCI expects the programme to support development in areas including trust frameworks, grievance redressal processes and operational intelligence. The central body also said the platform is intended to be usable by banks, fintechs and other ecosystem participants, while maintaining focus on data security, sovereignty and responsible AI use.

NPCI chief technology officer Vishal Kanvaty said: “Through this collaboration with NVIDIA, NPCI aims to advance AI capabilities designed specifically for India’s payments ecosystem.

“Drawing from our experience of operating population-scale, real-time payment systems, this initiative is designed to create a sovereign, payments-native AI foundation that strengthens trust, resilience, and security, while remaining aligned with India’s regulatory and data sovereignty requirements.

“As we evolve from use-case–led AI deployments to a foundational and scalable AI layer, our focus remains on enabling the broader ecosystem to innovate responsibly through robust governance frameworks and secure, future-ready infrastructure.”

Last month, fintech firm ZET secured NPCI approval to operate as a third-party application provider (TPAP) within the UPI system.