I have following code where I am making a POST form request. The request body contains username and password. Password contains @ characters, which is replaced by RestTemplate with %40 and I am getting "unauthorized" error as the password is wrong now. Following is the debug info from bufferOutput(request body)

merchant_id=firstname+de-lastname%40gmail.com&password=%40Password

Here is the code snippet that is making the call.

MultiValueMap<String, String> formData = new LinkedMultiValueMap<String, String>();
String url = "SOME_URL";
formData.add("username", "xay@gmail.com");
formData.add("password", "@name321");

HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
headers.setContentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_FORM_URLENCODED);
HttpEntity<MultiValueMap<String,String>> requestEntity = new HttpEntity<MultiValueMap<String,String>>(formData,headers);

RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();
        restTemplate.getMessageConverters()
                .add(0, new StringHttpMessageConverter(Charset.forName("UTF-8")));
        restTemplate.exchange(url, HttpMethod.POST, requestEntity, Authentication.class,"321");

The question is how to tell restTemplate not to escape body data ? Note that the request has to be a post form request and I can not use UriComponentsBuilder to fix the problem.