Recurring card payments are going to fail again

Why read this story?

Editor's note: Siddharth Sridharan is the chief executive of Spendflo, a startup that helps companies buy and manage their software subscriptions. His work has been cut out for him by the Reserve Bank of India for the second time in the last 12 months.  “Our clients have lost access to their cloud services, email and other enterprise software they are dependent on. These are not small payments, they run into lakhs and crores every month. While mid to large companies are able to use Singapore or US bank accounts to continue paying for their software services, smaller businesses using Indian cards are suffering,” says Sridharan. “In terms of our business, I had to move all our payments to my US bank account and card last year. Overall, our collection time frame and administrative overheads have significantly increased,” he says.  Spendflo was just one business affected by the havoc around the RBI’s recurring payment rules, which came into effect in September 2021. Banks and the payments industry had largely dragged their feet on the new regulations—which required revamping systems to give customers control …