RBI allows recurring payments on digital payments by giving e-mandate

Reserve Bank of India has allowed consumers to make recurring payments of up to Rs 2,000 by giving an e-mandate from next month. The outcome of this move proves to be a boon to digital payment companies like Paytm, Razorpay and card schemes like Visa, Mastercard who are eyeing new avenues of business.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has allowed consumers to make recurring payments of up to Rs. 2,000 by giving an e-mandate from next month. This will allow setting up auto pay instructions for small-value repetitive transactions such as subscription payments and bill payments on mobile wallets or debit/credit cards without having to authenticate every time a payment is made.

The banking regulator has decided to permit processing of e-mandate on cards for recurring transactions (merchant payments) with Additional Factor of Authentication (AFA) during e-mandate registration, modification and revocation, as also for the first transaction, and simple/automatic subsequent successive transactions.

According to industry insiders, the next would be to allow recurring payments on Unified Payments Interface (UPI). The move has brought cheer to the payments industry that has been reeling under the government mandate to make all merchant payments free of cost. The mandate to bring an additional authentication point while starting, stopping or changing this service in any form will ensure security of such transactions.