NPCI launches UPI AutoPay feature for all recurring payments

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has launched UPI AutoPay, a new feature to ease the process of collection of recurring payments. The demand of channelising recurring payments was in the talks for a long time and today, the feature has been introduced officially.

The move will ease the process of recurring payments, including paying premiums, subscription fees, SIPs and EMI. Besides, there are multiple use cases of the recurring mandate feature which is currently capped at Rs 2,000.

Seeing the current scenario of the Covid-19 pandemic, the feature will help people go for contactless payments and avoid handling payments in cash to contain the spread of the virus.

"Recurring payments on UPI was a recommendation put forth by the Committee of Deepening Digital Payments which I chaired...will allow the role of reaching 1 billion transactions a day on UPI,” said Nandan Nilekani on the style="font-weight: 400;">launch at the Global FinTech Fest.

To use the feature, a user has to allow UPI as a payment option for paying a merchant and set up a one time UPI AutoPay mandate. The user will get a notification and has to enter the details such as amount, date of deduction of payments to allow it for recurring payments. A user will also get a notification at least 24 hour before the account gets debited.

Welcoming the launch, Razorpay’s CEO Harshil Mathur said “We are truly excited to partner with NPCI to launch support for UPI AutoPay and provide all our partner businesses with an unbeatable payment experience. With consumers opting for contactless payments in this Covid-era, UPI has turned out to be the preferred payment mode for many.” 

Paytm, Policybazaar, SBI, ICICI Bank, Bank of Baroda, Axis Bank and several digital payments firms and startups operating in the space have also welcomed the move from the government.

“We believe, this facility will not only benefit customers, but also merchants with an all new recurring payments experience. We also hope to achieve new milestones by expanding UPI's presence especially in the P2M payment space," said Dilip Asbe, MD & CEO, NPCI.