Finance Ministry allays worries on UPI fees, says suppliers might search ‘other means’

After the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) got here out with a dialogue paper final week on fees in cost techniques, the Finance Ministry on Sunday clarified that there isn’t any consideration within the authorities to levy any fees for Unified Payments Interface (UPI) companies.

In a dialogue paper launched on Wednesday, the RBI had requested stakeholders if the service provider low cost fee (MDR), a payment paid by retailers to buying banks, ought to be introduced again for UPI transactions. MDR on UPI transactions has been a long-standing demand of the funds trade.

Most different modes of digital retail funds entice a cost on transactions. Currently, the federal government has mandated a “zero-charge framework” for UPI transactions, with impact from January 1, 2020. This interprets into fees on UPI for customers in addition to retailers being nil.

The RBI paper, searching for suggestions on the payment construction for a variety of digital cost companies by means of a set of 40 questions, is open for feedback until October 3. The suggestions acquired could be used to information insurance policies and intervention methods, it mentioned.

However, the central financial institution had mentioned that at this stage, it’s “reiterated that RBI has neither taken any view nor has any specific opinion on the issues raised in this discussion”.

Terming UPI companies as a “digital public good”, the Finance Ministry stepped in on Sunday to make clear that the considerations for the service suppliers for price restoration should be met by means of different means. “UPI is a digital public good with immense convenience for the public & productivity gains for the economy. There is no consideration in Govt to levy any charges for UPI services. The concerns of the service providers for cost recovery have to be met through other means,” the ministry mentioned in a tweet.

It additional mentioned that the federal government had offered monetary assist for digital cost ecosystem final 12 months and has introduced the identical this 12 months as effectively to “encourage further adoption of #DigitalPayments and promotion of payment platforms that are economical and user-friendly”.

The RBI, whereas releasing the dialogue paper, had acknowledged that in “any economic activity, including payment systems”, there doesn’t appear to be any justification for a free service, “unless there is an element of public good and dedication of the infrastructure for the welfare of the nation”. “But who should bear the cost of setting up and operating such an infrastructure is a moot point,” the banking regulator had mentioned within the paper.

In its dialogue paper, the Reserve Bank has approximated that with a median worth of Rs 800 for a service provider transaction, varied stakeholders enabling the UPI transaction, together with the payer and beneficiary banks, the third-party app, and the NPCI, incur a price of Rs 2.

According to official knowledge from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), in July, there have been 628.84 crore UPI transactions representing a price of Rs 10.63 lakh crore. It has 338 banks reside on the platform. Recently, the RBI allowed UPI on bank cards as effectively beginning with NPCI’s RuPay playing cards.

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In her Budget speech for 2022-23, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had mentioned, “The financial support for digital payment ecosystem announced in the previous Budget will continue in 2022-23. This will encourage further adoption of digital payments. There will also be a focus to promote use of payment platforms that are economical and user friendly”.

The authorities allotted Rs 200 crore for reimbursement of fees in the direction of RuPay debit card and UPI transactions. In 2021-22, it had budgeted Rs 1,500 crore in the direction of this.

The RBI dialogue paper covers all facets referring to fees in funds techniques akin to Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) system, Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system and UPI, and varied cost devices akin to debit playing cards, bank cards and pay as you go cost devices (PPIs), and many others.