India's Digital Payments Network Faces Reality Check The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in India has been a game changer for digital payments, processing billions of transactions every month without charging merchants a fee.
However, this free ride is coming to an end as the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which operates UPI, introduces a 0. 4% merchant fee on certain payments above ₹2,000 from October 15.
Industry estimates put the annual cost of running UPI at around ₹200 billion ($2. 1 billion). The NPCI is now seeking to make the system financially self sustaining by introducing fees that were previously absent.