RBI Scrutinizes UPI Autopay System
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to review the UPI Autopay system. The request follows a rise in customer complaints regarding unexplained debits, duplicate deductions, and difficulties cancelling mandates. The review may lead to enhanced transparency and consumer safeguard requirements for platforms using the recurring payment feature.
- UPI Autopay has seen rapid adoption, with transaction volumes doubling over the past year; for the top 10 banks, transaction volume grew from 530.5 million in November 2024 to 926 million in November 2025. By January 2025, the feature accounted for over 53% of all recurring transactions, a significant increase from 33% the previous year. - Customer complaints that prompted the RBI's review extend beyond simple payment failures to include "involuntary" or unauthorized mandates being created and difficulties in the cancellation process. Some users reported that one-time payments occasionally triggered a recurring mandate without clear disclosure, while others found that deleting an app did not stop the debits as expected. - The scrutiny is focused on whether the user interface (UI) and consent process have "design ambiguity," where customers may authorize recurring payments without fully understanding the terms. Officials have noted the problem may not be systemic fraud but rather design gaps that lead to unintended approvals from users. - Even before the RBI's recent directive, the NPCI had started to tighten the Autopay framework in response to the growing volume of transactions and complaints. In December 2025, it held meetings with UPI ecosystem stakeholders to assess gaps in the mandate and interface design. - As of August 1, 2025, the NPCI implemented new performance guidelines for Autopay. These rules mandate that recurring debits be processed only during non-peak hours and limit the number of retry attempts for a payment to one primary attempt and up to three retries. - To improve consumer control and transparency, the NPCI has also mandated interoperability for Autopay mandates as of December 31, 2025. This requires that users be able to view and manage all their active mandates from any UPI app, regardless of which app was used to create them. - The potential outcomes of the review include clearer disclosure requirements for merchants and apps when setting up a mandate. These could specify the payment frequency, duration, and total amount the user is consenting to. - This regulatory focus aligns with the RBI's broader push for stronger consumer protection and grievance redressal within the rapidly growing digital payments sector. The central bank has been working to clear pending complaints through its ombudsman scheme and has emphasized that regulated entities must keep customer protection central to their operations.
