Since its inception in 2016, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions have been witnessing a meteoric rise. According to the latest data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), UPI transactions have reached a record-high both in terms of volume and value, i.e. 7,305.4 million transactions amounting to INR 12.11 crores. With the rapid adoption of UPI, the banking and fintech industry, along with the Indian Government, have been bullish on this digital mode of payment.

Hence, after gaining traction on UPI 1.0, NPCI came up with an advanced version of UPI, i.e., UPI 2.0, which further introduced features that provide more accessibility and flexibility to the user, including linking of overdraft account, e-mandates and payment via QR code.

In July 2022, UPI Autopay - one crucial feature of UPI 2.0, was introduced to enable recurring e-mandate using any UPI application for repetitive payments such as mobile bills, electricity bills, EMIs, entertainment/OTT subscriptions, insurance, and mutual funds, among others. Recently, the cap of INR 2000 was changed to INR 15,000 as the feature gained popularity. This implies that all auto-debits are now permitted up to INR 15K without a PIN, expanding the use cases and enabling more customers to choose this service.

Compared to credit cards, where card issuers are prohibited from using a credit card to make an unauthorised direct debit without giving 24hrs prior notice to the credit card user, UPI autopay provides the flexibility of instant auto-debit. 

Many payment service providers (PSPs) are adopting this feature such as Paytm, BHIM, Razorpay, etc. For Indian users who pay for in-app subscriptions, Google Play has recently unveiled its own UPI-based automatic payment option. This feature enables users to easily set up recurring payments using any UPI application. The industry anticipates that more players will join the list in the upcoming days as the feature continues to gain traction.

Mr. Mandar Agashe, Founder and Chairman of Sarvatra Technologies can elaborate further on this topic. Sarvatra Technologies is a leading end-to-end payments and banking technology solutions provider in India. It holds a leadership position in providing technology for UPI transactions in India. It manages a major portion of the total transaction volume that is generated on UPI nationally. Sarvatra provides back-end UPI technology to apps such as Google Pay, Whatsapp Pay, Tata Neu and more.