{"id":1033663,"date":"2026-09-07T08:56:41","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T03:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/?p=1033663"},"modified":"2026-09-07T09:46:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T04:16:14","slug":"upis-free-ride-faces-a-new-test-as-india-weighs-merchant-charges-for-sustainability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/2026\/09\/07\/upis-free-ride-faces-a-new-test-as-india-weighs-merchant-charges-for-sustainability\/","title":{"rendered":"UPI\u2019s free ride faces a new test as India weighs merchant charges for sustainability"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Unified Payments Interface has spent its first decade making digital payments almost invisible \u2014 a scan, a tap and the money moves. In the second decade, India\u2019s most ubiquitous digital payments system faces a problem its success created: how to keep UPI growing at breakneck speed without making its economics unsustainable. <\/p>\n<p>The zero-MDR regime that helped turn UPI into a mass-market phenomenon is under scrutiny as policymakers weigh whether selected merchant transactions should carry a charge, while keeping UPI free for person-to-person (P2P) transactions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Unified Payments Interface has spent its first decade making digital payments almost invisible \u2014 a scan, a tap and the money moves. In the second decade, India\u2019s most ubiquitous digital payments system faces a problem its success created: how to keep UPI growing at breakneck speed without making its economics unsustainable. The zero-MDR regime that helped turn UPI into a mass-market phenomenon is under scrutiny as policymakers weigh whether selected merchant transactions should carry a charge, while keeping UPI free for person-to-person (P2P) transactions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[83,4,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1033663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it-2-the-telegraph","category-newspapers","category-the-telegraph"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033663","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\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1033663"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1033690,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033663\/revisions\/1033690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1033663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1033663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1033663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}