The Centre stated on Sunday that there are no intentions to charge users of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for using the service, despite the fact that it is a “digital public good with immense convenience.”
The Ministry of Finance stated on Sunday that there must be alternate ways to address service providers’ concerns about cost recovery.
“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 tweeted.
This comes after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) requested feedback from stakeholders on the idea of implementing incremental charges on payments made through UPI, based on different amount bands. In a discussion paper, the RBI proposed streamlining the structure of fees for various payment services or activities, including RTGS (Real-Time Gross Settlement), UPI, IMPS (Immediate Payment Service), NEFT (National Electronic Funds Transfer), and prepaid payment instruments (PPIs).
The RBI reaffirmed that it has not taken a position and does not have a specific opinion on the problems addressed in the discussion paper, despite the fact that it has asked for feedback on the proposal by October 3.
Currently, neither users nor retailers pay any fees while using UPI to make payments. In order to foster wider use of digital payments and the development of affordable, user-friendly payment platforms, the government said on Sunday that it had offered financial support for the ecosystem of digital payments the previous year and would do so again this year.
