UPI AutoPay for recurring payments: Step by step guide

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) launched the UPI AutoPay which would allow recurring payments on Unified Payment Interface (UPI). This is a part of UPI 2.0, the updated version of the instant payment system run by NPCI.

The UPI AutoPay will help smoothen the process of recurring payments like monthly systematic investment plans (SIPs), insurance premium payments, subscription payments and OTT payments. Currently, to enable this feature, consumers either have to give a National Automated Clearing House (NACH) or a physical mandate.

“The UPI AutoPay offering would provide millions of UPI user’s convenience and safety while making recurring payments. This facility will benefit customers and merchants with an all new recurring payments experience. We hope to achieve new milestones by expanding UPI's presence especially in the person-to-merchant (P2M) payment space,” said Dilip Asbe, CEO, NPCI.

1. You need to create an e-mandate through UPI-enabled bank ID or QR Scan for transactions up to Rs 2,000.
2. But firstly, you have to authenticate your account through UPI PIN for one-time and subsequent monthly payments would be debited automatically. But for amount exceeding Rs 2,000, a UPI PIN authentication will be required for every mandate.
3. Any UPI-enabled application would have a ‘Mandate’ section, through which you can create, approve, modify, pause as well as revoke auto-debit mandate.
4. The mandate section will also allow you to view your past mandates for reference and records.
5. These mandates can be set for one-time, daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, and yearly.

As reported by TimesNow, some banks, merchants and aggregators who have already gone live with UPI AutoPay are Axis Bank, Bank of Baroda, HDFC Bank, HSBC Bank, ICICI Bank, IDFC Bank, IndusInd Bank, Paytm Payments Bank, AutoPe-Delhi Metro, AutoPe-Dish TV, CAMS Pay, Furlenco, Growfitter, Policy Bazaar, Testbook.com, The Hindu, Times Prime, Paytm, PayU, RazorPay, among others. The Jio Payments Bank, State Bank of India and Yes Bank will soon go live with UPI AutoPay.

As per National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) data, payments on Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in June hit an all-time high of 1.34 billion in terms of volume with transactions worth nearly Rs 2.62 lakh crore.

As reported by Gadgets 360, UPI has become a popular choice for digital transactions in India. The India Digital Payments Report 2019 revealed that UPI facilitated transactions worth Rs 18,36,000 crores which was up 214 percent from 2018. "UPI is perhaps the fastest product to hit 1 billion transactions-a-month in 2019 since its inception in August 2016," the report said.