PhonePe: A Processing Fee Will Be Charged On Phone Recharges Above Rs 50

PhonePe, a famous Indian Unified Payment Interface (UPI) application, has announced to charge a transaction fee on payments above Rs 50. This is an experiment that is being run by the company on a very small number of users. Recharges between Rs 51 and Rs 100 have a Re 1 charge and those above Rs 100 will be charged Rs 2.

However, other transactions on PhonePe and money transfers will continue to remain free of charge. On bill payments, a processing or convenience fee on credit cards will be charged, which has been the industry norm for a while now. It makes up 45 percent of UPI monthly volumes and 47 percent of the monthly value of transactions.

UPI players are not allowed to levy any charges due to the Zero Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) policy which came into effect in January 2020. MDR refers to the charges levied to merchants for using digital payment modes. Under the policy, merchants should not be levied any charges on digital payments made through UPI, RuPay debit cards, and UPI QR codes.