The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is preparing to make UPI AutoPay interoperable, a change that would allow users to move their existing recurring payment mandates from one UPI app to another, without needing to cancel and set them up again. Merchants could also shift existing mandates between payment providers when they change gateways.
What Will Change for UPI AutoPay Users
At present, recurring payments can keep users tied to the UPI app where an AutoPay mandate was originally created. The proposed interoperability would allow eligible mandates to be accessed across UPI apps instead.
This means a consumer could move an existing AutoPay mandate to another UPI app, rather than cancelling a subscription, insurance premium, systematic investment plan, or loan repayment mandate and creating it all over again from scratch. Users could also get a cross-app view of their mandates, making it easier to keep track of upcoming payments, account balances, and subscriptions they may have simply forgotten about over time.
According to the report, these features are expected to be announced at the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai next month.
Will Changing UPI Apps Affect Your Bank Account?
The bank account originally authorised by the customer will continue to be used for payments, regardless of which UPI app manages the mandate. The interoperability change is intended to make eligible mandates accessible across UPI apps, rather than change the actual bank account from which the payment is deducted.
NPCI launched UPI AutoPay in 2020, to enable businesses to automatically debit customers' bank accounts at fixed intervals for recurring payments such as subscriptions, loan repayments, insurance premiums, and mutual fund investments. The scale of such payments has increased quite sharply since then, NPCI data showed that the top 10 banks processed nearly 1.8 billion UPI e-mandate transactions in July, more than three times the 585 million processed in July 2025.
What This Means for Merchants and UPI Apps
The proposed system could also give merchants considerably more flexibility when changing payment gateways. Currently, a subscription business switching payment gateways can route new customers through the new provider, while older mandates remain stuck with the original provider. With interoperability, existing mandates could also be moved to the new payment provider, eliminating this awkward split.
This change could also reduce the built-in advantage enjoyed by larger UPI apps today. Users who establish recurring payments on one platform may currently be less willing to move to another, simply because of the effort involved in shifting their AutoPay arrangements manually. Making mandates portable could give smaller UPI apps a genuinely better opportunity to attract users whose recurring payments are currently managed through larger platforms such as PhonePe or Google Pay.
Implementing this system, however, will require changes across consumer-facing UPI apps, meaning the rollout likely won't be instant even once announced.
The Scale of India's UPI Ecosystem
To put this in context, UPI processed a record 23.66 billion transactions worth ₹29.88 trillion in July, according to NPCI data cited in the report. PhonePe accounted for 45.89% of transaction volumes, followed by Google Pay at 32.33% and Paytm at 8.05%, giving a clear sense of just how concentrated the market currently is among a few dominant players.
This proposed AutoPay interoperability is ultimately aimed at moving recurring UPI payments away from a closed system, giving consumers greater freedom to use different UPI apps while allowing merchants more flexibility in choosing their payment providers.
FAQs
Q1. What does UPI AutoPay interoperability actually mean for users?
It would allow users to move existing recurring payment mandates, like subscriptions or loan repayments, from one UPI app to another without needing to cancel and recreate them.
Q2. Will switching UPI apps change the bank account linked to a mandate?
No, the bank account originally authorised by the customer will continue to be used for payments, only the app managing the mandate changes, not the underlying account.
Q3. How large is India's UPI ecosystem currently?
UPI processed a record 23.66 billion transactions worth ₹29.88 trillion in July, with PhonePe, Google Pay, and Paytm together accounting for the vast majority of transaction volumes.