Summary of this article
· Atal Pension Yojana's registration form revised to meet PFRDA standards
· New form effective from October 1, 2025, with mandatory FATCA declaration
· Old forms discontinued after September 30, 2025
The Atal Pension Yojana (APY) is a fixed pension scheme for the informal sector workers. Recently, the government has revised the registration form used to apply for the scheme. The Department of Post (DoP) issued an office memorandum (OM), clarifying that from October 1, 2025, the new form will be accepted for registration of new applicants. The previous version of the registration was discontinued on September 30, 2025, and cannot be accepted for processing, as communicated by Protean, the central recordkeeping agency (CRA). CRAs are the entities that maintain the records of subscribers, issue permanent retirement account numbers (PRANs), update account details, and process contributions, among other administrative functions.
The revised form for new registrations is in line with the latest version of the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA). Notably, one can open an APY account with the post office, banks, or online on the NPS website.
The revised form ensures that the subscribers fulfil the eligibility criteria, and for that, the revised form includes a mandatory Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and common recordkeeping standards (CRS) declaration. "This declaration applies to a person who is a U.S. Person or whose Country of Birth / Citizenship / Residence is other than India", reads the OM.
The changes have been implemented in the Subscriber Registration File (SRF) form in the CRAs' systems, and thus, if an applicant who selects the FATCA or CRS declaration cannot subscribe through the Post Office Savings Account (POSA) channel now. And as per rules, a non-resident Indian cannot open an account under the Post Office savings bank schemes.
Atal Pension Yojana (APY)
APY is a guaranteed and fixed pension scheme based on subscribers' defined contributions. PFRDA regulates the scheme, and at present, there are over six crore subscribers to APY. Under this, a subscriber contributes until the age of 60, and then the fixed pension payout starts. The entry age is between 18 and 40 years. The applicant should not be an Income-tax payer. The contribution is based on the age and the amount of pension one wants in old age. There are predefined pension slabs, which include Rs 1,000, Rs 2,000, Rs 3,000, Rs 4,000, and Rs 5,000 per month for life, and thereafter the same pension is payable to the spouse of the subscriber.
The aim is to streamline the registration process at different authorised entities, including the post office. As the OM states, "No unauthorised or generic forms are to be used for APY-related activities." It became effective on October 1, 2025.
