Modi govt’s new UPI fee: Who benefits, who doesn’t?

We have all spent years training ourselves to ditch cash.

Scan. Pay. Walk away.

It was that easy, right?

But from October 15, some UPI payments will no longer be completely free.

The government says the fee isn't for you or me; it’s for the merchant.

And it won’t be on every transaction. The new Merchant Discount Rate, or MDR, will apply to merchant payments above Rs 2,000.

We have always been told UPI is free.

So if it was  "free," who was actually paying for the massive machinery behind it?

And now, that machinery is being given a new way to recover its costs - who gets to make money from a payment system that an entire country has spent years building?

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