Recurring in India
Recurring in India is the RBI-regulated way to take repeat debits from cards, wallets or UPI using a registered mandate, advance notice and amount-based authentication rules. A saved payment method is not enough: the customer must approve the mandate, receive pre-debit notification, and re-authenticate charges above the allowed threshold.
The problem is that a global card-on-file subscription model does not map cleanly to India. In many markets, a merchant can store a credential after the first payment and later submit renewal charges. In India, recurring debits are treated as a mandate-driven flow. If you bill first and think about authorisation later, the debit may be declined, the service may already have been delivered, and your ledger now has unpaid usage rather than collected revenue.
Mechanically, the customer first registers an e-mandate and completes Additional Factor Authentication. That mandate becomes the authority under which future debits are attempted. Before each debit, the customer must receive a pre-debit notification at least 24 hours earlier. If the transaction amount is at or below 1500000 paise, the debit can proceed without fresh AFA under the mandate. If it is 1500001 paise or more, fresh AFA is required for that debit.
The trade-off is less invisible billing and more operational state. You must track mandate status, notice timing, debit schedules, amount thresholds and failed authorisations. Billing code also has to compare amounts in paise, not formatted rupee strings, or it can misclassify a transaction around the threshold. This is commonly misunderstood as a payment-gateway quirk, but it is really a regulatory workflow that gateways expose through their APIs.
Engineers meet this when integrating Indian subscriptions through payment providers, UPI AutoPay, card mandates, wallet mandates or billing platforms. The shape is usually: create mandate, confirm customer authentication, schedule renewal, send or rely on the provider to send the notice, then debit under the mandate. Razorpay, Cashfree and similar providers hide some details, but your product still needs to model pending mandates, skipped cycles, retries and fresh-AFA cases.
Common questions
- Can I just charge a saved Indian card for a subscription?
- Not reliably. A stored card credential by itself is not sufficient for an Indian recurring debit. The customer must have an RBI-compliant mandate registered with Additional Factor Authentication at setup. Without that mandate, a renewal that would work as a normal card-on-file charge elsewhere can be declined or treated as unauthorised.
- What is the notice period before a recurring debit in India?
- The customer must receive a pre-debit notification at least 24 hours before the charge. In engineering terms, if the debit is scheduled for a given time, the notification must be sent no later than 24 hours before that time. Sending it shortly before charging is not equivalent and can cause the collection to fail.
- When is fresh AFA required for an Indian recurring payment?
- Fresh Additional Factor Authentication is required when a recurring debit is above 1500000 paise. At or below that threshold, the debit may run under the existing mandate without fresh AFA, assuming the mandate is valid and the notice rule is satisfied. The comparison should be made in minor units, not display rupees.