28 December 2019
Talking-money
No MDR charges from Jan 1 on UPI, RuPay transactions
New Delhi, December 28: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday said no Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) charges will be applicable on transactions through RuPay and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platforms beginning January 1, 2020.
“Department of Revenue (DoR) will notify RuPay and UPI as the prescribed mode of payment for undertaking digital transactions without any MDR. Accordingly, all companies with a turnover of ₹50 crore or more shall be mandated by DoR to provide the facility of payment through RuPay Debit card and UPI QR code to their customers," the finance ministry said in a statement.
Following a meeting with public sector bank CEOs, the finance minister said: "After extensive consultation with stakeholders, banks and so on. I'm happy to say that announcement which was made in the budget will see the notification coming on January 1, 2020 whereby those modes which are getting notified will not have charges under the MDR being levied on them."
MDR is a cost paid by a merchant to a bank for accepting payment from their customers via digital means. The merchant discount rate is expressed in percentage of the transaction amount.
The meeting was attended by chiefs of public sector banks, chief executive of Indian Banks’ Association and representatives of leading private sector banks. Finance Secretary, Revenue Secretary, Economic Affairs Secretary, Electronics and Information Technology Secretary, CBI Director, RBI representative and the chief executive officer of NPCI were also present.