No Charges On UPI Payments: Govt.

The Indian government will has decided not to levy any fees for Unified Payments Interface (UPI) services in the coming future too. The finance ministry stated via a tweet that UPI would stay free. "UPI is a digital public utility that provides enormous convenience to the public while also increasing economic productivity. The government is not considering charging for UPI services. Service providers' concerns about cost recovery must be addressed in other ways, " the tweet stated.

After reports spread online that UPI transactions could include a service charge, the finance ministry disputed the news on Sunday. According to the RBI discussion paper on payment system costs released earlier this month, UPI payments may be subject to charges. As per the discussion paper, UPI is a fund transfer system comparable to IMPS, hence the costs in UPI for fund transfer transactions should be similar to those in IMPS.Currently, there are no fees associated with UPI transactions.

Previously, Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrated the 6 billion UPI transactions in July, which saw the largest number of digital transactions since 2016.

According to National Payments Corporation of India data, UPI registered 6.28 billion transactions totaling 10.62 trillion (NPCI). "The Govt gave financial support for the #DigitalPayment ecosystem last year and has announced the same this year to stimulate further adoption of #DigitalPayments and promotion of payment platforms that are inexpensive and user-friendly," the finance ministry tweeted.

The RBI owns and operates the RTGS and NEFT payment systems in India. The National Payments Corporation of India owns and operates systems such as IMPS, RuPay, and UPI (NPCI). Beginning January 1, 2020, the government has required a zero-cost framework for UPI transactions. This means that UPI charges are nil for both users and merchants.