Accept UPI for one-time and recurring payments in India

What's new?

Paddle now supports UPI in early access for both one-time purchases and subscriptions in India. Customers in India can pay in INR, on desktop and mobile, and use UPI to pay for recurring subscriptions through UPI Autopay.

How it works

UPI is the main way to pay online in India, processing the majority of digital transactions in the country. Previously, UPI was available for one-time, cross-border payments in USD.

Today, we've updated the Paddle platform so you can now accept UPI for domestic payments in INR for both one-time purchases and subscriptions.

UPI Autopay

Subscriptions use UPI Autopay, which sets up an e-mandate that authorizes Paddle to collect recurring payments.

UPI is a deferred capture type payment method: at each renewal, the customer receives a pre-debit notification, then the charge is attempted at least 24 hours later. This is part of the e-mandate rules set by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

Because UPI e-mandates authorize a fixed recurring amount, there are some constraints on recurring payments. To make mid-cycle changes to a subscription, you should use a next billing period proration billing mode. This applies the change at the next renewal instead of charging immediately.

If you're upgrading a plan, or making a change that results in a higher recurring amount, the next renewal will fail and the subscription will become past_due. The customer can update their payment method when prompted by Paddle Retain to authorize a new mandate for the new amount.

Payment limits

• A maximum transaction total of 100,000 INR.
• A 15,000 INR limit per checkout that includes a recurring item.

Next steps

There are no changes to endpoints or fields in the API as a result of this change. You may start to see upi as a value for transaction.payments[].method_details.type for transactions created for subscriptions. This value was previously allowed, but not returned for subscription-related transactions.

If you haven't turned on UPI before, you can start accepting UPI by turning it on in Paddle > Checkout > Checkout settings.

If you turned on UPI previously, you don't need to do anything. UPI is automatically available for transactions for recurring items priced in INR where the customer address is in India and the total is less than 15,000 INR.

We recommend reviewing your India pricing to make sure per-renewal amounts stay below 15,000 INR, and check how any billing screens in your frontend display upi payments. For testing instructions, see the UPI guide.

If you previously set up unit price overrides to offer prices in USD in India, you can remove or update them to offer prices in INR instead.