After RBI’s notification that came out on March 31, 2021, Google has decided to stop all auto renewing subscriptions on the Google play store for a while. They have also suspended free trials and introductory pricing plans with immediate effect. 

The decision has been taken by Google only after the central bank’s mandate that no new subscribers should be added for recurring subscriptions till the time an online platform is compliant with its new framework. As free trials and introductory pricing plans fall under the category of recurring payments, hence Google asked developers to suspend it.

With the introduction of these new rules, RBI wants to include additional factor authentication (AFA) for recurring payments using payment cards. And once this rule kicks in all standing instructions registered on debit and credit cards for services will get deactivated.

Apart from this, all banks have been informed to send out a notification to customers five days before a recurring payment is due and enable the debit to undergo only after the customer approves the transaction. Banks have further been asked to send a one-time password to all their customers for auto-debit payments of Rs. 5000 and above.  

As many banks and payment gateways requested the central bank for additional time to comply with the new regulations and so RBI extended the timeline from March 31, 2021, to September 30, 2021, for processing recurring online transactions. As per RBI, the extension has been given to avoid any inconvenience to the customers. However, the notification clearly states that any further delay in ensuring complete adherence to the framework beyond the extended timeline will attract stringent supervisory action.