New Delhi – The eagerly anticipated rollout of ChatGPT Go’s free 12-month access plan in India has encountered a significant early snag: widespread issues with UPI payments that have left many users unable to access the service, prompting a public acknowledgment from OpenAI of technical disruption.
A bold move meets high demand
On November 4, 2025, OpenAI officially opened its promotion in India: users who sign up would receive a year of free access to ChatGPT Go, the company’s latest subscription tier. The offer required no subscription fee for the first year, but did mandate a payment method either a credit/debit card or UPI handle so that the account could be billed automatically after the 12-month free period ends.
The announcement generated strong interest among India’s rapidly growing AI-user base. India has increasingly become one of the highest-growth markets for ChatGPT and other large-language-model-powered services.
UPI: The preferred gateway, but also the trouble spot
To facilitate local payment convenience, OpenAI enabled UPI as one of the payment options. For many Indian users, UPI is the preferred digital payments rail, offering instant bank-to-bank settlement and integration across a wide array of apps and banks.
However, within hours of the launch many users began reporting problems. According to multiple reports:
Users approved the UPI mandate (often a Re 1 debit for verification) but the ChatGPT Go plan did not activate.
Some users saw payment status approved, yet remained stuck on payment screen or “activate plan” remained greyed-out.
Others reported that even valid UPI Virtual Payment Addresses (VPAs) such as myname@phonepe produced error messages (“Invalid VPA”) or incomplete mandate statuses.
What OpenAI says
In a statement shared by Indian news outlets, OpenAI said that the volume of sign-ups had “briefly overwhelmed our UPI integration,” and the company was working with its payment partners to restore full availability.
The company emphasised this was a temporary disruption and offered reassurance that the free-year offer remains valid for those who successfully complete the verification and activation process.
Who’s being affected and how
The payment problem appears to affect users choosing UPI primarily, though card-based payments have also seen slower-than-usual activation times. Some of the complaints from users on social media platforms include:
The plan did not activate even after the UPI payment was confirmed twice (Re 1 each time). The page indicates that ₹0.00 is due, yet ChatGPT Go is not accessible. “UPI verification is stalled! Despite having a legitimate ID, such as myname@phonepe, there is an invalid VPA problem. Not fulfilling the mandate
These reports suggest that, while the payments may have gone through in some sense, the backend binding of the mandate or user-account upgrade process is lagging.
Why this matters
From a user perspective, this glitch undercuts the excitement built around the promotion. Many early adopters expected seamless sign-up, quick activation, and full access to ChatGPT Go’s advanced features but instead faced frustration at the first hurdle. That frustration can erode trust, particularly for subscription-based services where continuity and ease of onboarding matter.
For OpenAI, India represents a major strategic market. Enabling UPI payments was clearly aimed at removing friction for Indian users. But the failure to scale the verification/payment mandate process under high load exposes the risk of infrastructure not fully ready for peak traffic.
The situation also highlights a broader point: when launching large-scale digital services in India, even with established payment rails like UPI, the combination of high traffic, mandates for bank authorisation, and regional variation in payment-partner behaviour can expose weak links.
Technical root-causes (inferred)
While OpenAI has not publicly disclosed the full technical breakdown, industry analysts point to plausible contributing factors:
1. High concurrency: The surge in sign-ups appears to have far exceeded the expected baseline, leading to queuing or time-outs in the UPI-mandate workflow.
2. Mandate authorisation delays: UPI mandates require banks and payment aggregators to respond promptly to authorisation requests. High volume can lead to time-outs or un-confirmed mandates.
3. Edge-case VPAs: Some users with valid VPAs still got “Invalid VPA” errors suggesting either mismatches in the VPA directory, or restrictions imposed by the bank/APIs during bulk mandate submissions.
4. Backend account-upgrade logic: Even when payment verification succeeded, the front-end may have failed to flip the user’s account into the “Go” tier state, leaving them in limbo.
5. Rate-limiting or API-throttling: UPI infrastructures (and supporting APIs) often include rate-limits for bot-detection or flood-control. The sudden influx may have triggered those safeguards.
Impact on users & what to do
For users who have encountered the disruption, here are some practical pointers:
Wait an hour or more before retrying the activation; the queue may clear as OpenAI’s partners scale up the backend.
If possible, consider switching temporarily to card/debit-card payment instead of UPI, to bypass the UPI-mandate bottleneck.
Ensure your UPI app/bank is updated and that your VPA is active, correctly spelled, and has no transaction limits that may trip verification.
Keep an eye on official updates from OpenAI (via blog or social media) and your bank’s UPI notification for reimbursement or reversal of failed verification charges (e.g., the Re 1 temporary debit).
If the offer still doesn’t activate within a given timeframe (e.g., 24–48 hours), contact OpenAI’s support with screenshots and transaction IDs.
Bigger picture: What this reveals about India’s AI-payments intersection
The incident serves as a case study in the convergence of AI-services and local-payments infrastructure. India’s digital ecosystem has matured rapidly, with UPI leading global instant-payments models. But when a global service like ChatGPT attempts to integrate at scale, local idiosyncrasies and traffic volumes become key stress-points.
India already sees over 20 billion UPI transactions per month, making it one of the densest payment infrastructures in the world.
Integrating a global AI-app subscription model requires bridging between OpenAI’s global-scale systems and India-specific flows (e.g., local payment rails, bank mandates, regional compliance).
User expectations are high: when a promotion is launched, any friction tends to get amplified via social media comments, posing brand-risk.
For a company scaling globally, the Indian launch becomes a benchmark: if it falters here, local word-of-mouth and press expose the issue.
What next for OpenAI & its Indian users?
In response to the issue, OpenAI is expected to deploy the following steps:
- Scaling payment-gateway capacity: Increasing head-room for UPI-mandate traffic to avoid bottlenecks in bulk activation windows.
- Staggered roll-out: Rather than allowing all users to activate immediately, OpenAI may temporarily throttle or queue new sign-ups to smooth onboarding.
- Improved error-handling: Provide clearer on-screen messaging for users whose payment is verified but activation is delayed; include estimated wait-times and escalation routes.
- User-communication push: A proactive update via email/app notification to explain the delay, status of recovery, and reassurance that the free offer remains valid.
- Fallback payment methods: Encouraging users to use other payment methods (card, net-banking) if UPI remains congested.
For users, patience is key. The free-year offer remains attractive but it only works if the activation completes. Keep your payment information handy, monitor account status, and if the plan doesn’t activate, escalate with support.
A moment of reflection: The risk of “too many at once”
Promotions such as “free for a year” are powerful marketing vehicles, but they carry risk if infrastructure can’t match demand. In this case, the very popularity of ChatGPT Go and the draw of a free offer likely caused an initial spike that overwhelmed the system.
“Demand was so high it briefly overwhelmed our UPI integration,” according to one media site.
For future launches in India (and globally), companies might consider a phased approach, or “early-access slots,” to moderate the flow and ensure activation is smooth.
The rollout of ChatGPT Go’s free-12-month plan in India is a bold and appreciated move by OpenAI, signalling the company’s intent to deepen its presence in one of the world’s fastest-growing digital markets. But the initial hiccup with UPI payments specifically, failed or stuck mandate activations has introduced friction at a moment when user experience is key.
While the root cause appears to be high traffic and mandate-verification bottlenecks, the larger lesson is that integrating enterprise-scale AI services with consumer-payments rails in a market as complex as India demands both technical resilience and expectation-management.
For users: stay updated, retake activation if needed, consider alternate payment methods, and rest assured the offer remains valid. For OpenAI: this is a moment to reflect, scale, and communicate transparently so that when the next wave of activations hits, the experience is smooth, seamless and crowd-pleasing.
