YES Bank and Open Financial Technologies have launched an agentic payments platform designed to identify recurring payments at risk of failure and intervene before the transaction is presented, initially focusing on loan repayments and EMI collections.
The i-Mandate platform targets banks, non-bank financial companies, mutual fund providers and enterprises. Traditional recurring-payment systems generally attempt a debit against a predefined account on a predetermined date. When funds are unavailable, the payment fails, and a failed EMI can trigger additional customer communication and recovery processes.
i-Mandate introduces an intelligent layer before that point. Its architecture is built around three functions - Predict, Decide and Act - allowing the platform to assess payment behaviour, determine an intervention permitted under an institution’s policies and engage with the customer before the scheduled debit fails.
Potential actions include changing the payment date, switching the account used for repayment, registering another mandate or completing the transaction using an alternative payment method. The AI payment agent can interact with customers through voice and WhatsApp in 22 Indian languages, while institutions retain control over permitted actions, customer consent requirements and other controls.
FROM COLLECTION TO PREVENTION
Its Smart Protect feature analyses account and transaction patterns, with customer consent, to assess when funds are typically available and to identify upcoming recurring payments that could fail.
For example, if an EMI is due before a customer’s usual salary credit, the system can flag the payment as potentially at risk and help facilitate an alternative, subject to the lender’s policies and customer authorisation. For lenders, the system is aimed at reducing avoidable payment failures and the collection activity that follows them.
The initial use cases include loan repayments and equated monthly instalment collections, although the infrastructure could extend to mutual fund investments, subscriptions and enterprise payments.
WHY IT MATTERS
The platform, launched at Global Fintech Fest 2026 in Mumbai, takes AI in banking beyond customer service and fraud monitoring into transaction-level intervention.
i-Mandate forms part of Open’s Arc AI-native lending platform for banks and NBFCs, which is designed to work with existing lending and banking systems across payments, borrower servicing, collections and recovery.