Zerodha eMandate charges: what you pay to register and run a mandate

Before setting up automatic transfers, most investors want to know one thing: what will it cost? The short answer for an eMandate on Zerodha is that registering one and running transfers through it costs nothing at the Zerodha end. There is a small refundable verification step on the UPI AutoPay route, and there are bank-side penalties if a scheduled debit bounces, but these are not fees that Zerodha keeps. This page sets out exactly what is free, what is refundable, and what your bank might charge, with each fact attributed to its official Zerodha source.

Zerodha charges nothing to register or transfer

Zerodha’s position is stated plainly on its charges-for-eMandates support page: there are no charges for eMandate registrations or transaction costs for transferring funds using an eMandate at Zerodha. We observed this on 30 June 2026 (see the references below).

That covers both halves of the cost question. Registering a mandate, whether through your bank’s net-banking login, your debit card, or UPI AutoPay , attracts no fee. And once the mandate is live, each recurring debit it drives, whether it funds your trading account or a Coin SIP, carries no transaction charge from Zerodha. This is true for both mandate rails: the bank eNACH mandate and the UPI AutoPay mandate. Setting either up is covered in our guides on how to set up a net-banking eMandate on Zerodha and how to set up a UPI eMandate on Zerodha .

This zero-charge stance also aligns with the regulatory position. Under the Reserve Bank of India e-mandate framework for recurring transactions, banks are not permitted to impose additional charges on customers for availing the e-mandate facility itself. So neither Zerodha nor your bank should be charging you simply for having an active mandate.

The one exception on UPI AutoPay: a refundable ₹1 debit

There is a single small debit you may notice when you set up a UPI AutoPay mandate, and it is worth explaining so you do not mistake it for a fee. When you authorise a UPI AutoPay mandate in your UPI app, ₹1 is debited from your bank account to verify the mandate, and it is credited back within T+4 working days, per Zerodha’s UPI AutoPay page.

This is a verification transaction, the same technique used to confirm that a payment instruction is valid and active. It is not a charge, it is fully refunded, and it appears only on the UPI AutoPay route, not on the bank eNACH route. If you see a ₹1 debit right after setting up UPI AutoPay, wait the few working days and it will return. Our walkthrough on how to set up a SIP with UPI AutoPay on Coin shows where in the flow this happens.

Bank penalties for a failed debit

The one situation where real money can be charged is a failed debit, and even then the charge comes from your bank, not from Zerodha. If a scheduled mandate debit is presented to your bank and your account does not have enough balance to honour it, the bank may levy a penalty for the dishonoured instruction.

Zerodha’s charges page cites two examples of these bank penalties:

• ICICI Bank: ₹500 per instance.
• State Bank of India: ₹250 per instance.

These are illustrative figures from Zerodha’s page, observed on 30 June 2026. The exact amount varies from bank to bank, and other banks are not listed, so we do not quote figures for banks Zerodha does not name. Check your own bank’s schedule of charges for the precise penalty it applies to a failed mandate or NACH debit. The important point is that this is a penalty for a bounced debit, in the same family as a cheque-return charge, and it is entirely avoidable by keeping enough balance in the account on the debit date.

Remember that the account is debited one working day before the scheduled mandate date, so the balance needs to be in place a day early. If a debit does fail, our guide on how to fix a failed SIP debit and the Zerodha eMandate troubleshooting page walk through the recovery steps.

A worked example makes the arithmetic clear. Suppose you run a ₹10,000 monthly SIP through an eNACH mandate on an ICICI Bank account, and on the debit date the account holds only ₹7,000. The debit is presented, bounces for insufficient funds, and ICICI levies its ₹500 dishonour penalty. Your account is now at ₹6,500, the SIP instalment for that month has not gone through, and you have paid ₹500 for nothing. Had you kept ₹10,000 in the account the day before, the full instalment would have processed and the penalty would never have arisen. This is why the balance, not the charge, is the thing to manage: the fee is a consequence of a shortfall, not a cost of using the mandate.

The RBI framework also builds in a warning to help you avoid exactly this. Under the e-mandate rules for recurring transactions, banks and payment providers must send a pre-debit alert at least 24 hours before each debit, stating the amount, the debit date and the merchant. Treat that alert as your cue to check the balance, alongside the SMS and email that Zerodha and your bank send one day in advance.

Bank mandate verification fees

Separately from failed-debit penalties, some banks may levy a mandate verification fee when a NACH mandate is registered or verified at their end. Zerodha notes that banks may charge such fees. This is a bank-level charge over which Zerodha has no control, and, like the penalty above, it is not money that Zerodha receives.

In practice most retail savings-account customers do not encounter a verification fee, but if you want certainty, ask your bank whether it applies one to eNACH mandate registration before you set the mandate up. If a verification fee is a concern, the UPI AutoPay route, which carries only the refundable ₹1 check described above, avoids the eNACH verification step entirely.

How to avoid every avoidable charge

Because Zerodha itself charges nothing, the only costs in the whole process are the bank-side ones, and both are avoidable:

• Avoid the failed-debit penalty by keeping sufficient balance in the linked account one working day before each scheduled debit. Zerodha and your bank send an SMS and email one day in advance of the debit, which is your reminder to top up. Note that current accounts cannot be used for eMandates in any case; only primary and secondary savings accounts qualify, and you can add a secondary bank account on Zerodha if you want a dedicated account for the mandate.
• Avoid an unwanted debit and its knock-on penalty by cancelling a schedule in time. Zerodha requires you to cancel a schedule at least three working days before the next credit date, or four working days for SBI accounts. Our guide on how to cancel an eMandate on Zerodha covers the difference between cancelling a schedule and deleting the whole mandate, and delete schedule mandate error covers the case where a deletion is stuck in process.
• Avoid mistaking the ₹1 UPI check for a charge by simply waiting for the T+4 refund.

eNACH versus UPI AutoPay on cost

On pure cost, there is little to separate the two rails, because Zerodha charges for neither. The only cost differences are at the edges: the UPI AutoPay route has the refundable ₹1 verification debit but no eNACH-style verification fee, while the eNACH route has no ₹1 check but may, at some banks, attract a mandate verification fee. Both are exposed to the same bank penalty if a debit bounces for insufficient funds. So the choice between them usually comes down to speed, convenience and the applicable daily limit rather than to charges. For those limits, see our companion page on the Zerodha eMandate daily limit , which sets out the ₹1 crore eNACH cap and the ₹1 lakh UPI AutoPay cap.

See also

For the amount side of the same mandate, read the Zerodha eMandate daily limit . To set a mandate up, see how to set up a UPI eMandate on Zerodha or how to set up a net-banking eMandate on Zerodha . To schedule the transfers, see how to schedule an eMandate transfer on Zerodha . For the concept and how NACH sits underneath it, the Zerodha eMandate hub and our eMandate and NACH SIP explainer tie it together.

References

1. Zerodha Support, “What are the charges for eMandates?”, support.zerodha.com, observed 30 June 2026: https://support.zerodha.com/category/funds/mandate/other-emandate-related-queries/articles/charges-for-emandates
2. Zerodha Support, “How to set up eMandates?”, support.zerodha.com, observed 30 June 2026 (bank mandate verification fees): https://support.zerodha.com/category/funds/mandate/how-to-set-up-emandates/articles/setup-emandate
3. Zerodha Support, “UPI autopay”, coin-mandates, support.zerodha.com, observed 30 June 2026 (the refundable ₹1 verification debit, credited back in T+4 working days): https://support.zerodha.com/category/mutual-funds/payments-and-orders/coin-mandates/articles/upi-autopay
4. Reserve Bank of India , Digital Payments E-mandate Framework for recurring transactions, under which banks may not levy additional charges for availing the e-mandate facility, rbi.org.in; and NPCI NACH and UPI AutoPay operating guidelines, npci.org.in.

Disclosure: WebNotes is an independent educational resource and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or partnered with Zerodha. The charge figures on this page were transcribed from Zerodha’s official support pages on the date shown and may change. We earn no commission on any account or product mentioned here. Always confirm current charges on the official Zerodha support pages and with your bank before acting.