{"id":1026805,"date":"2026-08-06T11:02:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T05:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/?p=1026805"},"modified":"2026-08-06T11:02:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T05:32:34","slug":"will-upi-payments-remain-free-rbi-governor-clarifies-there-is-no-decision-yet-on-merchant-discount-rate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/2026\/08\/06\/will-upi-payments-remain-free-rbi-governor-clarifies-there-is-no-decision-yet-on-merchant-discount-rate\/","title":{"rendered":"Will UPI payments remain free? RBI Governor clarifies there is no decision yet on Merchant Discount Rate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Sanjay Malhotra on Wednesday said it is too early to conclude whether Unified Payments Interface(UPI) transactions will attract a Merchant Discount Rate (MDR), even as the government&#8217;s proposed amendments to the payment law have reignited the debate over the future of India&#8217;s zero-charge digital payments regime.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking after the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting, Malhotra said discussions around the Payment and Settlement Systems (Amendment) Bill, 2027 are still underway and the RBI&#8217;s immediate focus remains strengthening the country&#8217;s digital payments infrastructure rather than deciding how it will eventually be funded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Sanjay Malhotra on Wednesday said it is too early to conclude whether Unified Payments Interface(UPI) transactions will attract a Merchant Discount Rate (MDR), even as the government&#8217;s proposed amendments to the payment law have reignited the debate over the future of India&#8217;s zero-charge digital payments regime. Speaking after the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting, Malhotra said discussions around the Payment and Settlement Systems (Amendment) Bill, 2027 are still underway and the RBI&#8217;s immediate focus remains strengthening the country&#8217;s digital payments infrastructure rather than deciding how it will eventually be funded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1026805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it-2-live-mint","category-live-mint","category-newspapers"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1026805"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1026807,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026805\/revisions\/1026807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1026805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1026805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1026805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}