BENGALURU: Retail payments organisation National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has launched the autopay feature to enable recurring payments under Unified Payments Interface (UPI) infrastructure.
Through autopay, users can set up recurring monthly payments on their UPI apps provided by payment service providers (PSP). They will have to authenticate their account through UPI pin only once while setting up the mandate. Subsequent monthly payments will automatically be debited from the user's account thereafter.
The new feature opens up a wide array of use-cases for paying mobile and electricity bills, EMI payments, entertainment and OTT subscriptions, insurance, mutual funds and loan payments, as well as enabling recurring payments for transit/metro cards.
With transaction value set to upper limit of ₹2000 for the automatic autopay mandate, consumers will have to execute every mandate with UPI PIN if the amount exceeds ₹2000.
“We have been witnessing a lot of changes in the way customers are making recurring payments over the last few years. The UPI AutoPay offering would provide millions of UPI users convenience and safety while making recurring payments. We believe this facility will not only benefit customers but also merchants with an all new recurring payments experience," said Dilip Asbe, managing director and chief executive officer, NPCI at the Global Fintech Fest on Wednesday.
UPI-enabled apps would also have a ‘mandate’ section, through which customers can create, approve, modify, pause as well as revoke this auto-debit mandate. The mandate section will allow customers to view their past mandates for their reference and records. UPI users can create this e-mandate through entering a UPI ID or scanning QRs.
The pattern for auto debit mandate has been created keeping in mind customers’ spends on recurring payments, and can be set for one-time, daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, half yearly and yearly, added NPCI.
“UPI being the one stop destination for customers’ day-to-day spends, acts as a backbone of digital India. Introducing UPI AutoPay on UPI is a testament of continuous innovation in the digital payments space," said Nandan Nilekani, non-executive chairman and co-founder, Infosys Ltd.
During the launch, several banking partners also announced use-cases and partnerships which they will be offering to consumers through the autopay feature.
HDFC Bank said that it has partnered with PolicyBazaar to help its customer base make recurring monthly payments for insurance premiums. ICICI Bank said that it will be leveraging UPI’s autopay feature to help customers set up recurring payments for entertainment and OTT platforms.
Other banks, merchants and aggregators which have already gone live with UPI autopay feature include Axis Bank, Bank of Baroda, IDFC First Bank, IndusInd Bank and Paytm Payments Bank.
Startups like Furlenco, Growfitter, Policybazaar, Testbook.com, Paytm, PayU, Razorpay, amongst others have also gone live with this feature.
NPCI also said that Jio Payments Bank, State Bank of India and YES Bank will soon go live with UPI autopay feature.
UPI transactions in the month of June reached an all time high, registering 1.34 billion transactions in terms of volume, as per NPCI data.
