The way users manage recurring UPI payments could become more flexible as the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) prepares to make UPI AutoPay interoperable across apps. The change will allow consumers to move eligible mandates between UPI apps without cancelling and recreating them.
Users will be able to shift existing AutoPay mandates for subscriptions, insurance premiums, systematic investment plans (SIPs) and loan repayments to another UPI app. Merchants will also be able to move existing mandates to a different payment gateway or acquiring bank when they change payment providers.
A cross-app view of mandates could also help users track upcoming debits, account balances and forgotten subscriptions. Mandates linked to different bank accounts will continue to be debited from the account originally authorised by the customer.
The proposed changes are expected to be announced at the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai next month, according to a person familiar with the development.
NPCI introduced UPI AutoPay in 2020 to enable automatic bank-account debits for recurring payments. NPCI and payment gateways have been working on merchant-side mandate portability for some time.
The move comes as recurring UPI payments continue to grow. NPCI data showed that the top 10 banks processed nearly 1.8 billion UPI e-mandate transactions in July, more than 3 times the 585 million recorded in July 2025.
Smaller UPI apps have pushed for greater interoperability, arguing that AutoPay mandates can make customers less likely to switch platforms.
“The smaller apps wanted what they call a level playing field. They feel AutoPay is one way in which people become captive to an app,” a payments industry executive said. “Generally, an AutoPay customer will be more sticky, because if you’ve set it up, there is always that fatigue of moving apps. So the smaller apps felt that it makes the consumer captive.”
If mandates become portable, newer apps such as Navi, POP UPI and super.money could have a better chance of attracting users whose recurring payments are currently managed through larger platforms such as PhonePe and Google Pay.
“All the apps also have to make changes to enable this, because it has to be across apps,” the executive said.
For merchants, portability could remove their dependence on the payment gateway holding their existing mandates. A merchant switching providers would be able to move both new and existing mandates to the new gateway.
“If I were Netflix and initially went live with another payment gateway, such as PayU, I may later want to move both new and existing mandates to Cashfree. Under interoperability, Cashfree would then be able to execute debits on those existing mandates going forward,” said Reeju Dutta, co-founder of Cashfree Payments.
“Without interoperability, a merchant can move new customers to a new gateway, but the mandates of existing customers remain with the original provider. That leaves the merchant tied to the earlier gateway for its legacy mandate base, which is the problem interoperability is designed to solve,” Dutta added.
The change will require consumer-facing UPI apps to make technical updates. “This is a heavy lift on the TPAP (third-party application provider) side, on the consumer app side, because that’s where you’re trying to create the interoperability by saying nobody should have a proprietary AutoPay product,” an industry executive said.
The broader objective is to move UPI AutoPay away from closed systems. “The objective is to move away from a closed-loop system and create a many-to-many network that is agnostic to the consumer app being used. Users should be able to set up UPI AutoPay services regardless of where the biller is onboarded,” the executive said.
UPI recorded a record 23.66 billion transactions worth ₹29.88 trillion in July. PhonePe accounted for 45.89% of transaction volumes, followed by Google Pay at 32.33% and Paytm at 8.05%.
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