Did the RBI's 2021 recurring-payment rules, which required customers to re-authorise auto-debits, reveal how much subscription retention depended on consumer inertia rather than preference? The study considers the transition period from October 2021 to be a regulatory shock and compares the activity in the months leading up to the shift with the activity in the months following, both in terms of card-based online payments and UPI payments, as well as between credit- and debit-card transactions, by applying an event-study and difference-in-differences framework. RBI card-payment data from public reports and NPCI UPI transaction data for the year 2021 and RBI e-commerce observations of cards made available through May 2022. Online card transactions are a proxy for subscription-level churns, as these aren't publicly known and are interpreted with caution. There was no evidence of a sudden drop in card activity at the moment reported to happen by the inertia hypothesis. Debit-card transactions grew by 1.81% in the first half of the year as compared to the second half, and credit-card transactions grew by 0.79% in the second half when compared to the first half. The difference between the card and UPI was statistically significant, but the pre-existing divergent trends violated the parallel trends assumption. But the evidence does not allow concluding that there is a causal effect of subscription inertia, but merely at the level of the available proxy to payment.