UPI Autopay for Recurring Payments & Subscriptions in India

NPCI introduced UPI Autopay with the launch of UPI 2.0 at Global Fintech Fest in 2020. This feature lets individuals and merchants make recurring payments with any UPI applications available to them by enabling e-mandates. Using UPI Autopay, they can pay for mobile bills, electricity bills, EMI payments, entertainment/OTT subscriptions, insurance, mutual funds, and many others, which are primarily recurring payments. Businesses and the relevant party can agree on a specific period and set up the mandate. They can set the mandate for daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, and yearly recurring payments. Each time the deduction is a fixed amount or an amount within the maximum limit set by the merchant in the mandate.

UPI is the most preferred mode of payment in India among consumers and merchants. Merchants are more likely to offer their customers the option of making flexible recurring payments through UPI for purchases made. Open offers UPI autopay, and this is how one can use it:

• Merchants can register and get associated with a payments service provider such as Open that supports UPI Autopay.

• They can then create and share mandates with customers who want to make recurring payments.

• The customer should then authorize the mandate by entering the UPI PIN (a one-time event)

• Recurring payments with UPI Autopay get activated as soon as the customer completes the authorization. For the first time, consent is mandatory for debit. From the second instance onwards, no approval is required.

• Money starts auto-debiting from customers’ accounts at the designated time. Twenty-four hours before a debit happens, the customer receives a notification about the oncoming transaction.

UPI Autopay benefits merchants and customers immensely in receiving and making repetitive payments quickly and securely. Here are some of those:

• Forget multiple authorizations once recurring payment is activated: Merchants can instantly generate mandates and send them to their customers. Customers authorize UPI Autopay requests for recurring payments, a one-time activity, as soon as they receive a mandate from the merchant. According to the mandate, the merchant receives payment from customers accounts automatically.

• Confirm mandates in real-time: To enable recurring payments, customers had to wait from hours to days when a mandate was allowed through credit cards and debits cards. However, UPI Autopay’s benefit is that mandate confirmation is instant. As soon as the merchant sends a mandate to his customer, they can authorize recurring payments right away. The interval of recurring payments in the mandate can be daily to yearly and everything in between.

• Never miss a payment: 24 hours in advance, merchants and their customers are reminded of oncoming UPI Autopay transactions. Post that, the transaction happens automatically at a designated time.

• Improved payment success rate: Pre-debit notifications from UPI Autopay benefit merchants and customers. The timely message allows customers to maintain an adequate account balance for the transaction to complete successfully.

• Low Chargebacks: Customers can always attend and make changes such as suspending or revoking the mandate. UPI Autopay notifies merchants of the changes, thus decreasing the number of chargebacks.

• Increase Customer Count: There is a sizeable Indian population that lacks access to financial instruments such as managing recurring payments. On the other hand, UPI is one of the most accessible and easy ways of making payments. UPI Autopay is fast and secure, giving the merchant and the customer control of their repetitive payments, making it even more enticing. Thus, UPI Autopay benefits merchants and customers alike.

Businesses use many different online subscriptions for ease of doing work, entertainment, and various other services. These subscriptions come with weekly, monthly, or yearly payment plans. With RBI banning the auto-debit feature from debit cards and credit cards, remembering the payment details, intervals and making the payment without fail is a hassle.

Therefore, the secure UPI Autopay system gives merchants the freedom to set up mandates for customers. It relieves them from the mental burden of worrying about every payment they are yet to receive and sending reminders to customers for payment.

Merchants can manage the mandates easily without any hassles. They can revise payment intervals and revoke the mandates set for their customers. They do not need to wait for customers to make payments as the money is auto-debited at regular intervals once the customer authorizes the mandate (a one-time event). UPI Autopay gives merchants and their customers freedom from annoying reminders and a secure platform to make recurring payments automatically.