Parliament Standing Committee didn’t discuss MDR charges on UPI transactions, says Gaurav Gogoi

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Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi. File | Photo Credit: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

Expressing concern over the recent announcement of the imposition of 0.4% Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) charges on Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions over ₹2,000, Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi said on Thursday (September 17, 2026) that the Parliament Standing Committee on Finance did not discuss the decision.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has introduced a charge of 0.4% that most merchants will have to pay banks and payment processors on UPI payments they receive in excess of ₹2,000 per transaction, it said in a circular issued on Tuesday (September 15, 2026).

Mr. Gogoi said in an X post that, the Department of Finance did not have any specific proposal on the MDR charges when they met the members of the Finance Committee.

Earlier, Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance Bhartruhari Mahtab said that some MPs raised the issue at the meeting and said that it may be taken up at the next meeting of the panel.

Raising a question about the MDR charges, Mr. Gogoi said that representatives of the government did not provide any “specific or satisfactory” answers on the need for the new UPI charges.

Alleging that the new charges will “help the major American corporations”, Mr. Gogoi said that “the recent UPI tax policies hurt the small Indian merchants, vendors, entrepreneurs.”

He appealed to the government to roll back the MDR charges.

The charge, or MDR, will not be applicable to person-to-person UPI transactions and UPI transactions to small vendors. All person-to-merchant transactions of up to ₹2,000 done on UPI or through RuPay debit cards will also be exempt. In some sectors, such as Railways, telecom, insurance, fuel and agriculture inputs, transactions over ₹2,000 will incur a flat MDR of ₹5.

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