Ask HN: What is wrong with Reserve Bank of India?

> Not one Indian payment processor (I've talked to a many) gives you the option to create recurring subscriptions.

Not true, Paypal allows you to create recurring subscriptions in India, I already have two subscriptions which PayPal charges to my CC every month automatically. So, I'm questioning the premise of this post, PayPal certainly follows RBI regulations now, and if other payment processors are not doing it, it must be a business decision on their part, and maybe they will do it going forward. Can you provide any references of RBI policies prohibiting recurring subscriptions ?

I don't see how unsecured CC is good for us. Credit card fraud raises national debt, makes your economy reliant on derivatives such as insurance and in the end you fall down. Maybe US economy could sustain derivative based approach because of it's size, but India would be in much worse position if something like 2008 happened here.

Now, that said, this could be an opportinity for a startup, so stop complaining for a moment. Americans did not have easy way to pay, what did they do? They created PayPal. Indians don't have easy way to accept recurring payments, what should we do? Create an alternative to CC using ECS. We do have ECS, remember? It's a great system and roadside lenders are using it, so it's not hard to setup. It's just not a simple API yet. So get it there.

You know, somebody must have ported CC online too. Wasn't the same since Adam. Somebody needs to do that with ECS and then we would have a system that is orders of magnitude more secure that recurring CC, requires almost no insurance, and puts the guy paying directly in control.

Don't start off assuming that CC is a very bright idea, in general. With all that said, I do believe RBI is working on a simplified banking API guidelines.

Also SaaS has nothing to do with recurring CC. Don't you use postpaid services in India? Generate an invoice and give someone a week to pay. I mean if it's good enough for other service providers, why not for SaaS? Just use a shorter payment deadline.

You can't just buy gas in a can here in Portugal either, and the same is true in other European countries and in Brazil. You need to have a certified recipient, due to safety concerns related to spills and gases that might leak.

What's annoying is that stations often don't sell them, so you need to carry one in your car.

Spills and gases are not even close to being on their agenda here, they just want to curb vandalism by denying them easy access to gas, for someone who really wants petrol for purposes other than as fuel in vehicles, it isn't that difficult to siphon some out of gas tanks of vehicles. That's how I did it, otherwise I wouldn't ever get to drive that vehicle again. How do you keep a can in car, if they don't sell it in cans, how do get oil in cans?

If its a fraud its a fraud you can get your money back. There's a difference between being cheated and wanting the service & being willing to pay for it.

I might point out on Paypal you get an email every time a charge is done and you can easily cancel any subscription in under a minute quite easily so you wont forget about anything.

Direct Debit (such as that offered by HDFC, Axis, etc) can also do the same thing, although it is more difficult to cancel than a credit card would be & less services are available to it.

Also consider if you pay cash/neft/rtgs/paytm for 12 months upfront instead of every 1 month recurring for a subscription service. Its going to be harder to get that back (and perhaps not possible) if you decide to cancel halfway than it would be with a credit card/paypal.