In a significant move to empower consumers and bring greater transparency to digital payments, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is implementing stricter controls over recurring charges. This initiative directly targets opaque billing practices, often called dark patterns, and aims to give users clear oversight and control over their subscriptions and automatic payments.
New Central Portal for Unified Autopay Management
The cornerstone of this effort is the launch of a centralised portal: upihelp.npci.org.in. This platform allows users to view and manage all their UPI-based autopay standing instructions from a single dashboard. The development is a direct response to concerns where users, especially on e-commerce platforms, are subtly nudged into accepting recurring payment mandates. These mandates often lead to automatic monthly debits with limited visibility and no straightforward way to cancel them.
Enhanced Transparency and Mandate Portability
This public-facing portal follows a comprehensive circular issued by the NPCI on October 7, 2025, which overhauls the entire autopay framework. The mandate for all Unified Payments Interface network members is clear: they must implement these sweeping changes by December 31, 2025. Until that deadline, all existing autopay mandates will continue to function without interruption.
Under the revised rules, consumers will gain unprecedented visibility. They can see all their active autopay mandates across various applications, accessible through a "Manage bank accounts" section or a dedicated autopay area within any UPI app of their choice. More importantly, the new framework introduces mandate portability. This means users can seamlessly shift a recurring payment instruction from one UPI app to another. Similarly, merchants gain flexibility to migrate mandates between payment service providers or update their UPI IDs without disrupting the core terms of the mandate.
Balancing Flexibility with Consumer Protection
The NPCI has wisely paired this new flexibility with robust guardrails to prevent misuse. Key security and privacy measures include:
- Any action on a mandate will require authentication via the user's UPI PIN.
- A specific autopay mandate can be ported only once every 90 days, preventing frequent, potentially confusing changes.
- Strict prohibitions are placed on apps using cashbacks, incentives, or persistent prompts to push users into switching mandates artificially.
- Mandate data collected cannot be repurposed for anything beyond its display on the portal, significantly tightening privacy protections for users.
Alongside these structural changes, the NPCI has rolled out "UPI Help," a conversational assistance platform designed to guide users through the new system and resolve queries. This multi-pronged approach by the payments authority marks a decisive step towards a more consumer-centric and transparent digital payments ecosystem in India, putting control back into the hands of the user.
