eMandate cancellation: Don’t worry! You still have options

Your e-mandate on credit and debit cards for recurring payments or standing auto debt instructions given to merchant portals and other apps are likely to get rejected from October 1. The reason being the Reserve Bank of India‘s (RBI) requirement for a common platform for all the stakeholders in the payment chain from card issuer, merchant acquiring bank, card network (Visa or Mastercard) and merchant. The deadline was earlier extended from March to September this year.

Under the new system, the customer has to follow a one time e-mandate registration process with the merchants where the information will flow from merchant to bank. The common platform will require transaction details like validity of auto debit, amount, payment bank, etc. The OTP (one time password) confirmation will be mandatory for the first transaction. However, there are many merchants that are still not ready with a common platform with banks and card networks. Don't worry, you still have options.

Authenticate your transaction via OTP

If your merchant and the bank are not integrated, the best option to make the payment on a merchant portal or any consumer app is by authenticating  the transaction via OTP. This will be a little time consuming, but much safer than the earlier system. In the old system, there have been instances of bank accounts or cards getting debited for services discontinued but not updated in the merchant portal. There was also no customer redressal system as merchants were not regulated by the RBI. The customer needs to register their correct mobile number with the bank for availing these services.

Use the bank’s net banking facility

Every bank offers the net banking facility to register for third party payments from utility bills to DTH, insurance premium etc. These payments can be done as auto payments without any hassles. The third party payments list is gradually increasing for banks as many service providers are registered with the banking network.

Also read: RBI expands 'tokenisation' facility to CoFT services after device-based framework