Over the past couple of months, a number of websites and services have started to offer recurring payments on cards. For example, Business Standard, which recently took some of its stories behind a paywall, asks readers to purchase a monthly or yearly subscription, and has been billing them each month without asking users for a second factor of authentication (such as a one-time-password or a 3D secure password) as mandated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Others include STAR TV's HotStar and Ola Money auto-recharge. Why recurring billing is important This is a significantly important change for the payments ecosystem in India: typically, many global digital services (such as news subscription for the Financial Times, video services like NetFlix and BoxTV, email marketing services like MailChimp and Software-as-a-service tools such as VWO) charge user credit cards on a monthly basis. In India, this has historically not been done because of the second factor of authentication requirement, which adds an additional layer of friction to the transaction: users end up thinking again about whether they really need this service, or they deprioritize the decision to make the payment and hence drop out. With that layer of friction now potentially missing, online businesses can bill more easily. How recurring billing is being processed for Business Standard Pankaj Dedhia, senior marketing manager at CC Avenue, the payment gateway aggregator which is processing Business Standard's subscription payments, told MediaNama that these recurring payments are only available on credit cards and not debit cards, and will work on both 3D secure password…
