BANGALORE:
With an intent to provide a major boost to UPI transactions and deliver an easy and secure way for consumers to make recurring payments online, Razorpay launched support for UPI AutoPay in association with NPCI at the Global Fintech Fest.
The leading full stack financial solutions company has been powering innovations on UPI (Unified Payments Interface) since 2016. Now, with this offering the company will enable its partner businesses across Digital Content Platforms (OTT), Lifestyle Subscription platforms, Insurance, Education and other sectors experience the huge potential of UPI AutoPay by exploring new revenue models and serving a wider audience.
Traditionally, the recurring payments feature was first allowed for debit cards, credit cards and prepaid payments instruments in 2019. However, the overall payment experience was broken. UPI AutoPay comes as a relief for both businesses and consumers as subscriptions will now be streamlined providing enough visibility and control to businesses and consumers. This move is likely to make signing up for financial services, bill payments, digital content platforms (OTTs) and lifestyle subscription services upto a certain limit, much easier for customers.
UPI AutoPay will give more power and flexibility to customers allowing them to set up recurring payments using any of their UPI apps. Some of its features will include:
With a limit of Rs. 2000 in every cycle, it makes consumption of day-to-day needs convenient and affordable for consumers as they don’t need to make bulk payments
Consumers can choose the day of debit and can view, suspend, or revoke a digital mandate via their UPI app or merchant website
Pre-debit notifications will be sent to consumers 24 hours prior to the payment, allowing customers to pay, pause or cancel the e-mandate
Consumers can pay for their subscriptions on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly frequency
With real-time digital mandate registration, 24 hours pre-debit notifications and better success rates, the recurring payments model is expected to create opportunities for companies to scale, tap new consumer segments and improve customer loyalty and payment experience.
CEO and Co-founder of Razorpay, Harshil Mathur said, “We are truly excited to partner with NPCI to launch support for UPI AutoPay and provide all our partner businesses with an unbeatable payment experience. With consumers opting for contactless payments in this COVID-era, UPI has turned out to be the preferred payment mode for many. But now UPI AutoPay will be the next tipping point in digital payment innovation as consumers can easily set up recurring payments using their UPI Apps. Indian online businesses have been waiting for this feature for a long time as this will help them smartly collect recurring payments without any risk. The payment process is really simple, without the user having to worry about several layers of authorisation, still providing a high level of security. This model also gives flexibility and power of choice to customers as they can subscribe or unsubscribe a product or service at any point. I believe UPI AutoPay will definitely be a game-changer for subscription led-businesses.”
From online streaming content, health & fitness benefits to essentials and groceries, individuals have turned to all things digital with the current social distancing norm. And given how consumers continue to want flexible payment options, UPI AutoPay is expected to deliver an exceptional payment experience. Times Prime, which is one of the country’s largest lifestyle subscription platforms, is among the firsts to integrate Razorpay’s UPI AutoPay Support. The two companies are certain that an association like this will help deliver what the consumers have been looking forward to.
Vivek Jain, Business Head – Times Prime talks about the importance of emerging payment technologies for the subscription products, saying, “As a multi-category lifestyle subscription with benefits on India’s leading brands, we at Times Prime strive to deliver not only 10x value to our members but also seamless user experience. Specifically, reducing payment friction is a key driver to increasing lifetime value (LTV) which is imperative to the success of the business.”
He added, “To this effect, we have always been thought leaders and early adopters of recurring payment innovations across Credit Cards, Debit Cards, Wallets, and now UPI. Razorpay UPI Autopay integration was the logical step towards our product vision and I am confident that our customers will appreciate this hassle-free and secure payment option.”
Razorpay has started enabling its partner businesses to start accepting recurring payments on UPI. Furlenco, Times Prime, Policy Bazaar and Testbook are among some of the first companies to be integrated with Razorpay for recurring payments.
