In a move that will surely make it easier for consumers to make recurring payments via UPI apps, the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) is now allowing UPI platforms to enable the UPI AutoPay feature that should help with regular and timely payments. With this, consumers using UPI as a method to make payments can set up the autopay mandate for mobile bill payments, utility bills, cable TV and DTH recharge, prepaid mobile recharge, electricity bills and even insurance as well as loan payments. The condition here is that the maximum amount that each UPI autopay mandate allows is Rs 2,000. If the payment amount exceeds Rs 2,000 per payment, the UPI PIN authentication is mandatory. All payment apps that use UPI, including Google Pay, PhonePe, Amazon Pay and Paytm, will have to allow the UPI AutoPay option.
All UPI apps will now be required to have a Mandate option where users will be able to create, approve and modify the autopay mandate. These automatic payments can also be paused, and the autopay mandate can also be revoked if required, from within the app itself. These payment mandates, depending on what you are paying for, can be set for daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, half yearly and yearly intervals. At this time, UPI AutoPay has been enabled by Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, HSBC Bank, ICICI Bank, IDFC Bank, IndusInd Bank, Paytm Payments Bank, Paytm, PayU and RazorPay, among others. Those platforms which aren't offering this at the moment, will add the feature soon.
In June, the UPI payments volume hit its highest volume ever, clocking 1.3 billion transactions which totaled to around Rs 2.62 lakh crore, as per the NCPI data. That is an increase from 1.23 billion transactions in May. This was perhaps to be expected, as the Coronavirus Pandemic is still keeping people indoors, which has increased the reliance on digital payments for purchases, bill payments and even groceries.
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