Money Clarity

How to find subscriptions you are still paying for

The fastest way to find every subscription is to sort three months of bank statements by amount, smallest first, and mark anything that appears in all three months. Card-based subscriptions will not show in your UPI mandate list and UPI AutoPay will not show in your card statement, so you have to check both. Most people find two to four they had forgotten.

Why you cannot just check one place

Recurring charges in India run on at least three separate rails, each managed somewhere different. Checking only your UPI app is the most common reason an audit misses things.

UPI AutoPay mandates - managed inside your UPI app (GPay, PhonePe, Paytm, BHIM)
NACH / ECS mandates - managed in net banking, usually under Standing Instructions or Mandate Management
Card-on-file recurring billing - charged directly to a debit or credit card, visible only on the card statement
App store subscriptions - billed through Google Play or the App Store, cancelled only there

The scale of the problem in India

Subscription growth has outrun cancellation habits by a wide margin, and the payment rails make the drift easy to miss.

India had 172.6 million active paid OTT subscriptions in 2026, up 16% year on year (Ormax Media, 15,000 respondents)
UPI AutoPay revocations run at roughly 20 million a month, most triggered by low balances rather than deliberate cancellation (Business Standard)
Bundled telecom subscriptions often renew silently as part of a recharge, so the user never sees a separate debit
Annual plans are the easiest to lose track of - a charge that appears once every twelve months rarely gets noticed

The audit, step by step

This takes about forty minutes and is worth repeating every six months.

Export 3 months of bank statements as CSV and sort by amount ascending
Flag every debit that repeats across all three months - these are your true recurring costs
Open your UPI app and list active AutoPay mandates (Profile or History, depending on the app)
Open net banking and list NACH or standing instruction mandates
Check Google Play and the App Store subscription lists separately
For each item ask one question: have I used this in the last 60 days?

Cancel in the right order

Cancelling at the merchant and cancelling the mandate are different actions, and doing only one causes the two most common failures - a charge that keeps coming, or a service that stops while you are still paying.

Cancel at the merchant first, so you keep access for the period you have already paid for
Then revoke the mandate at your bank or in your UPI app, so a re-attempt cannot succeed
Banks must process mandate cancellations within 2 working days and must notify you 24 hours before each NACH or ECS debit
If a charge lands after cancellation, NPCI requires resolution within 7 working days; unresolved cases escalate to the RBI Complaint Management System

Common questions

Why do I still get charged after cancelling a subscription?

Usually because the merchant subscription was cancelled but the payment mandate was not, or the reverse. They are separate instructions on separate systems. Cancel at the merchant first, then revoke the UPI AutoPay or NACH mandate through your app or net banking.

How do I see every auto-debit on my account in one place?

There is no single place. UPI AutoPay lives in your UPI app, NACH and ECS mandates live in net banking, card-on-file billing appears only on the card statement, and app store subscriptions are managed by Google or Apple. Checking three months of bank statements sorted by amount is the closest thing to a complete view.

How long does a bank take to cancel a mandate?

Banks are required to process mandate cancellations within 2 working days, and to send you a notification 24 hours before each NACH or ECS debit. If a debit still goes through after that, NPCI requires the dispute to be resolved within 7 working days.

Check all four rails, not just the one you remember. Cancel at the merchant, then revoke the mandate. Then put a reminder six months out, because this drifts back.

Written by Danish Mirza, founder of Unyfy. 14 years in Indian lending and collections at Standard Chartered, Barclays, Ola Money and Uni Cards.
Last reviewed 2026-09-08.