Banks comply with RBI’s new norms on recurring card payments

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A month after the new rules of the Reserve Bank of India regarding the recurring card payments came into effect, the banks, which account for over 95% of credit cards in the market, are now compliant with the new system. Cardholders have registered over 20 lakh e-mandates with a host of retailers, reported The Times of India.

The report quoted payment industry sources as saying that SBI, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, Yes Bank, American Express, Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, ICICI Bank, HSBC, RBL Bank, IndusInd Bank, and Kotak Mahindra Bank are among the private lenders whose credit cards are qualified for the new standing payment mandate. Several institutions have made the mandate available for both debit and credit cards.

The merchant must also be onboarded to the new e-mandate architecture in order to receive automatic recurring payments. Most OTT (over-the-top) streaming platforms, private life and general insurance companies, global IT heavyweights like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and McAfee, as well as certain edtech companies, are among the complying enterprises.

Recurring Payment Systems

IT solutions like BillDesk’s SI Hub and Razorpay’s Mandate HQ have made it easier for businesses to get up and running quickly. Some domestic institutions, such as Canara Bank and Punjab National Bank, and Standard Chartered Bank, were in the process of making the necessary system adjustments until last week.

The report quoted sources as saying that card-based recurring transactions account for 2.5% of total card payments in terms of number and 1.5% of total card payments in terms of value. Approximately 75% of domestic recurring transactions have a value of less than Rs 5,000 on average. For cross-border recurring transactions, the equivalent figure is around 85%.

The new rules do not apply to Indian cardholders who have registered with international service providers with payment gateways in other countries. This is due to the RBI’s lack of authority in those markets to implement second-factor authentication. It is the customer’s responsibility to turn off foreign transactions on their cards.