RBI enhances limit for e-mandates on credit/debit cards to Rs 15,000

In October last year, the new e-mandate guidelines kicked in, wherein any mandate registration, modification, and deletion will require additional factor authentication (AFA)

In a relief to subscribers of journals and insurance customers for paying premia on a regular basis, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has increased the limit for e-mandates for recurring payments to Rs 15,000 from Rs 5,000.

After the e-mandate was capped at Rs 5,000 in October last year, customers had taken to social media complaining that they had to initiate payments at regular intervals for availing of such services. While announcing the move, the regulator said more than 62.5 million mandates had been registered in favour of a large number of domestic and over 3,400 international merchants.

“Since October 1 when we introduced the new framework, so far about 59 million mandates have been registered. The total mandates are about 65 million, which basically means about 6 million mandates existed before that and subsequently these many mandates have been created. So, probably a large part is covered,” said T Rabi Sankar, deputy governor, RBI.

“We heard from many people that international products such as magazines are expensive so every time doing the transaction becomes a problem so we increased the limit. The volume that is left out now is not that significant and with time that will also happen,” Sankar said, adding the RBI’s objective was for the customer to have better control on his or her digital payments.