The Government of India does not charge for Unified Payments Interface (UPI) services. In a tweet, the Treasury Department said UPI would remain free. “UPI is a digital public good with immense convenience for the general public and productivity gains for businesses. There is no government consideration to charge for UPI services. The concerns of service providers regarding cost recovery must be met by other means, “the tweet read.
1) After information circulated online that there may be a possibility that UPI transactions are subject to a service fee, the Treasury Department denied the news on Sunday.
2) The RBI Payment System Fee Discussion Paper released earlier this month suggested that UPI payments may be subject to a tiered fee based on different amount classes.
3) The RBI discussion paper states that UPI as a money transfer system is like IMPS and therefore it could be argued that the fees in UPI must be similar to the fees in IMPS for money transfer transactions.
4) There are currently no fees charged for transactions made through UPI.
5) Former Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomed UPI transactions, which exceeded 6 billion in July.
6) The number of digital transactions in July was the highest since 2016.
7) UPI recorded 6.28 billion transactions for a total of 10.62 trillion pounds, according to figures released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).
8) “The government provided financial support to the #DigitalPayment ecosystem last year and announced the same this year to encourage the further adoption of #DigitalPayments and the promotion of payment platforms that are affordable and easy to use”, the Treasury said in a tweet.
9) In India, the RTGS and NEFT payment systems are owned and operated by RBI. Systems like IMPS, RuPay, UPI, etc. are owned and operated by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).
10) The government has enforced a free UPI transaction framework effective January 1, 2020. This means that the fees in UPI are zero for both users and merchants.
