LotusPay

LotusPay Overview For Merchants: NACH Debit Recurring Payments In India

LotusPay is a payment solution designed for merchants and organisations in India that need to collect recurring payments directly from customers’ bank accounts. Instead of relying on instant payment rails like cards, wallets, or UPI, LotusPay focuses on NACH Debit mandates, including eMandates (eNACH) and physical mandates, and supports workflows for plans, subscriptions, and automated collections. For businesses that bill on a schedule, such as memberships, fees, premiums, instalments, or utilities, LotusPay is positioned as an operational layer for mandate setup, payment initiation, status tracking, and settlement management.

What LotusPay Does

LotusPay enables merchants to:

• Create plans, subscriptions, or individual mandates for customers.

• Have customers authorise NACH Debit mandates for direct debit of their bank accounts.

• Initiate debits under the mandate parameters without requiring customer authorisation for each payment.

• Monitor mandate and payment status in a dashboard, and via APIs and webhooks.

• Receive settlements to an Indian bank account, with payout timing described as same-day for collections.

LotusPay is explicitly not intended for instant payment acceptance such as credit cards, debit cards, digital wallets, or UPI. Its core use case is recurring direct debit through NACH.

How NACH Debit Collections Work With LotusPay

NACH Debit is a direct debit mechanism that relies on customer-authorised mandates. Under LotusPay’s model, the mandate authorisation step is separate from the actual debit events:

• The customer authorises a mandate (physical or electronic).

• Once active, the merchant initiates payments on that mandate.

• Payments must remain within mandate parameters such as amount, frequency, and date boundaries.

• Debits are processed through NACH batch clearing during working days, which affects how quickly a merchant can treat a payment as confirmed.

Mandate Variants Supported

LotusPay supports three core mandate variants:

• API eMandate: authorised through netbanking or debit card and PIN (used for identity and account ownership verification, not for card-based payments).

• eSign eMandate: authorised through Aadhaar eSign, including OTP and biometric-based authorisation modes.

• Physical mandate: a paper mandate workflow that is scanned and processed.

Operationally, API eMandates are described as being activated instantly, while eSign eMandates and physical mandates take a few days to set up.

Plans And Merchant Fit: Standard Vs Pro

LotusPay describes two commercial plans, each aligned to a different implementation depth:

Standard Plan

• Intended as a straightforward way to start with API eMandates.

• Uses a hosted flow where customers are invited to authorise mandates on a branded authorisation page.

• Pricing is structured without a monthly fee, using fixed fees per mandate and per transaction.

Pro Plan

Designed for more advanced operational requirements, including:

• Physical mandates and eSign eMandates.

• Working with a merchant’s own sponsor bank.

• Using a merchant’s own NACH utility code, including options intended to display only the merchant’s name on customer bank statements.

• API access controls that are associated with Pro plan usage, including API key issuance and the availability of sandbox/test access.

Payment Acceptance Channels And Customer Experience

Online And Mobile Acceptance

LotusPay supports web and mobile app experiences for mandate creation and subscription initiation:

• Merchants can use a dashboard to create plans or pre-fill mandates and invite customers to authorise.

• Merchants can generate payment plan links and place them on a website, sending customers to a branded authorisation flow.

• LotusPay provides a JavaScript checkout element (LotusPay.js) that can be embedded into a website or mobile app for eMandate checkout flows.

Merchant And Customer Notifications

LotusPay uses email notifications to support recurring billing operations:

• Customers receive emails related to invitations, payment collections, and mandate status changes.

• Merchant-facing visibility is provided via the dashboard, with the option for email notifications related to subscriptions, payments, and payouts.

• Pro plan merchants can opt into SMS invitation notifications for customers.

LotusPay positions the dashboard as merchant-only, and indicates that merchants are expected to support their own customers for payment-related queries, using dashboard information to respond.

Settlement, Payouts, And Payment Parameters

Settlement Timing

LotusPay describes payouts to merchants as occurring on the same day that the amount is collected from the customer, with funds paid into the merchant’s bank account. Settlement is limited to Indian bank accounts, and payouts to foreign accounts are not described as supported.

Amount Limits And Frequency Controls

LotusPay provides merchant controls that include:

• Minimum transaction amount: Rs 100 per transaction.

• Maximum transaction limits that vary by mandate type, including distinct caps for API eMandate, eSign eMandate, and physical mandates.

• Frequency options including intra-day, daily, weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, yearly, and ad hoc flows.

• Support for fixed and variable amounts, including the use of maximum amounts for variable collection scenarios.

Pricing Model

LotusPay presents a pricing structure that is simple in form but may vary in unit economics:

• No monthly fee is described for both Standard and Pro plans.

• Fees are described as fixed per mandate and fixed per transaction.

• A setup fee or minimum billing commitment is described for Pro plan usage.

• GST is described as applicable.

LotusPay also states there are no maintenance fees, and that Standard plan billing is tied to successfully processing mandates and transactions.

Developer Tooling And Integration Options

LotusPay is built around a combination of dashboard operations and developer integrations.

APIs And Webhooks

LotusPay describes:

• REST APIs that enable programmatic creation and management of mandates, subscriptions, and payments.

• A webhook service for real-time status notifications to a merchant application.

• The ability to create, modify, and cancel resources such as customers, bank accounts, mandates, subscriptions, and payments.

LotusPay also describes constraints relevant to implementation planning:

• iFrames are explicitly not offered.

• Plugins for common CMS platforms are explicitly not offered, with an expectation of direct API integration.

SDKs And Checkout Components

LotusPay indicates support for:

• Mobile SDKs for Android and iOS (described as single-line integration).

• LotusPay.js, a JavaScript library for building payment flows with NACH Debit eMandates, including:

  • A bank account element for collecting sensitive bank account details on a merchant site.

  • Tokenisation to generate a representative token for safer server-side handling.

  • A test environment flow to simulate authorisation.

Sandbox And Testing

LotusPay describes sandbox/test access as available to qualified Pro plan customers, typically by request.

Compliance, Verification, And Security Considerations

LotusPay’s recurring payment model is anchored to NACH Debit rules and sponsor bank requirements. From a merchant perspective, this typically implies:

• Providing organisational details, bank account details, personal details, and verification documents as part of onboarding.

• Adhering to NACH and sponsor bank rules relevant to mandate operations and payment initiation.

• Participating in KYC-style verification processes, including verification checks that may involve external agencies for validation.

For data handling, LotusPay describes security controls including encryption of sensitive customer data in transit and at rest, and a model intended to keep sensitive bank account information from reaching merchant servers when using embedded capture components.

LotusPay does not present certification claims such as PCI DSS, SOC reports, or ISO standards within its public materials, so merchants evaluating formal compliance alignment should treat LotusPay as a NACH direct debit platform rather than a card-acquiring PSP.

Industries And Use Cases

LotusPay describes usage across multiple recurring-payment-heavy categories, including:

• Banks and lenders

• Investments and insurance

• Charities and religious institutions

• Clubs, associations, and gyms

• Communities (rent, maintenance, utilities)

• Education (schools, colleges, coaching)

• Healthcare (chronic care and medicines)

• Professional services (retainers and service fees)

• Technology and SaaS-style recurring billing

• Utilities (electricity, gas, water, telecoms)

• Government agencies and fee collection

These segments align with merchants that need predictable collections, plan-based billing, and mandate-driven payment automation.

Conclusion

LotusPay is a specialised recurring payments platform for India built on NACH Debit mandates. It supports web and mobile initiation flows, plan and subscription management, dashboard-based operations, and developer integrations via REST APIs, webhooks, and SDKs. For merchants whose billing model depends on automated, mandate-based collections from customers’ bank accounts, LotusPay provides a direct debit operating layer with same-day payout positioning, fixed-fee economics, and options for branded or white-labelled customer experiences under its Pro plan.