Govt may restore merchant charges on UPI, RuPay transactions for big firms

The government is evaluating a proposal to bring back merchant charges on transactions conducted through Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and RuPay debit cards, according to a report by The Economic Times.

These charges, known as the merchant discount rate (MDR) in the payments industry, are fees merchants pay to banks to process real-time transactions. Currently, no MDR is applied to UPI and RuPay debit card payments, which are facilitated through the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).