[sparrish]

Got anything for India's new rules against recurring charges? So many of our customers in India are having a very hard time paying us with credit cards because their banks no longer are allowed to accept subscription charges.

[JakeVacovec]

Yes while the regulations for e-mandates had good intentions it makes recurring transactions more difficult. They've relaxed it a bit by increasing e-mandate cap from INR 5k to 15k (~$180 USD). If the transaction is below ~$180 then it is the issuing bank's (HDFC, SBI, etc.) responsibility to notify the customer 24 hours in advance. If over ~$180 then the customer needs to essentially approve each payment.

We have two approaches to this (1) we implement custom communication plans to notify customers in advance, day of, and in the days after with a multi-channel approach [email/sms] and (2) to switch offering to multi-month, annual, or semi pre-paid. Solution ensures a consistent and proactive approach if above the e-mandate cap and (2) reduces the frequency of customer intervention.

[TechDebtDevin]

This rule sounds crazy, do you have more info?

[deskr]

Sadly the way the subscription system is abused, this doesn't sound crazy at all.

[devmor]

That's what I was thinking - it sounds welcome. I would love if every recurring charge I had required me to recieve a notification to approve it.

I have spent my entire adult life attempting to avoid subscriptions and only use services I pro-actively pay for, which has become rather impossible over the last decade.

Returning to that would be great! Of course, a large amount of SaaS companies would be very unhappy with this - recurring billing on customers who forget about the service is a major revenue source. There's an entire industry built around "not-quite-scamming" people in this way.

Lately I've taken to using whatever credit card I have that is going to expire the soonest, or a virtual card, and then not updating it on customer portals. In many cases, this allows me to use a different card to make a "one time payment" after the recurring payment fails, which prompts me to evaluate whether or not the service is still something I need every month.

[ryandrake]

Yea, my reaction was the same when I read the comment: Can we please have this in the USA, too? It should take my deliberate action to charge my credit card.

[deskr]

Imagine if the subscriptions were opt in every month. You'd get an email: "Want to extend your subscription by a month? Click here."

That'd be wonderful for consumers and terrible for shitty companies. But it should be that way.

[TechDebtDevin]

I highly recommend privacy.com (not sure if this works in your jurisdiction) but this is how I've been navigating subscriptions for the past few years. I create a new card (privacy.com linked to my bank account) with one click, can set spending limits ect and do this for every subscription I'm not sure I'm going to want to resubscribe too. I can set it as a one time authorization for a certain amount to meet sign-up requirements and then I don't have to worry about forgetting.

[sparrish]

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/voices/new-recurri...

We've not seen much of an impact until the last couple of months when nearly all the charges for our customers in India have begun to fail. They're all below the $180 limit so I don't know what's going on.

[JakeVacovec]

We're happy to run an audit to see if there's a real opportunity to improve results for you.