India, Aug. 31 -- The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) is set to make UPI AutoPay interoperable, allowing users to port recurring payment instructions across apps and merchants to move existing mandates from one payment gateway to another, four people aware of the development said. The move could reduce two forms of lock-in in the recurring-payments market. Consumers will be able to shift existing AutoPay mandates to another UPI app instead of cancelling and recreating subscriptions, insurance premiums, systematic investment plans (SIPs) or loan repayments, while merchants will be able to move existing mandates to another payment provider when they switch gateways. For users, a cross-app view of mandates could also make it easier to track upcoming debits, account balances and forgotten subscriptions. Both features could be announced at the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai next month, one of the people said. Importantly, mandates linked to different customer bank accounts will continue to be debited from the account originally authorised by the user. The interoperability change instead allows eligible mandates to be accessed across UPI apps, while merchants can shift them to a new acquiring bank or payment gateway without requiring customers to register afresh. NPCI launched UPI AutoPay in 2020 to let businesses automatically debit a customer's bank account at fixed intervals for subscriptions, loan payments, insurance premiums and mutual fund investments. NPCI and payment gateways are working on interoperability to allow merchants to port mandates for acquiring partners for a while, the people cited above said. The scale of recurring payments has also grown. NPCI data showed that the top 10 banks cumulatively processed nearly 1.8 billion UPI e-mandate transactions in July, more than three times the 585 million handled in July 2025. The move is partly driven by smaller UPI apps, which see AutoPay as a tool that locks customers into larger rivals, a payments executive at a large UPI app said seeking anonymity. "Smaller apps wanted what they call a level playing field. They feel AutoPay is a way in which people become locked into an app. Generally, an AutoPay customer will be more sticky, because if you've set it up, there is always that fatigue of moving apps. So the smaller apps felt that it makes the consumer captive." Many users install a UPI app for cashbacks and offers, set up an AutoPay mandate and then have little reason to change apps because their recurring payments are linked to the platform. If mandates can be viewed and ported across apps, that advantage could weaken, giving newer apps such as Navi, POP UPI and super.money a better chance of attracting users whose recurring payments are currently managed through larger UPI apps like PhonePe or Google Pay. The change, however, requires work across the ecosystem. "All the apps also have to make changes to enable this, because it has to be across apps," the executive said, adding that his own company had made those changes. Queries to NPCI didn't elicit any response till press time. For merchants, interoperability means their existing base of mandates becomes portable. Currently, a subscription business that switches payment gateways can route new customers through the new partner, but its older mandates remain with the original provider....