Government Is Not Considering Any Charges For UPI, Says Finance Ministry The ministry also said that the concerns of the service providers for cost recovery have to be met through other means

The finance ministry, on Sunday, has said that the government is not considering any charges for unified payments interface (UPI). As per recent reports, the Reserve Bank of India had released a consultation paper in which it had suggested that a tiered charge could be imposed on UPI transactions in line with immediate payment service (IMPS) transactions.

"UPI as a funds transfer system is like IMPS. Therefore, it could be argued that the charges in UPI need to be similar to charges in IMPS for fund transfer transactions. A tiered charge could be imposed based on the different amount bands," stated RBI in the paper.

Now, the government has clarified that it does not have any plans to impose charges on UPI.

"UPI is a digital public god with immense convenience for the public and productivity gains for the economy. There is no consideration in government to levy any charges for UPI services," the finance ministry tweeted.

The ministry also added that, "The concerns of the service providers for cost recovery have to be met through other means. The government had provided financial support for the digital payment ecosystem last year and has announced the same this year as well as to encourage further adoption of digital payments and promotion of payment platforms that are economical and user-friendly."

Also, as per reports, the government has allocated INR 200 crore for imbursement of charges towards RuPay debit card and UPI transactions. It had budgeted INR 1500 crore towards this in 2021-2022.

The market studies reveals that, in July 2022, over 200 million transactions were done daily using UPI, resulting in a total of 6.28 billion transactions, and the total value of transactions in the particular month alone was INR 10.62 lakh crore.