Digital payment charges have been in the headlines recently. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman stated on Friday that the central government feels that charges on digital payments is not appropriate at this time.
Nirmala Sitharaman words on Digital Payments
According to ANI, Union Minister Nirmala Sitharaman while speaking at an interview said, we see the public benefit in digital payments. In order to make the Indian economy more attractive, people need have free access to it. Furthermore, with digitalization, we get the much-needed transparency.
She also added we continue to believe that the moment is not right time to make it a charge. We are putting more and more effort towards digitalization and platforms that can provide excellent access.
No Charges
Last week Government of India announced that there will be no charges on UPI (Unified Payment Interface) transactions. The government has already approved a zero-fee framework for UPI transactions from January 1,2020. As a result, neither consumers nor merchants will pay any fees when using UPI services.
The RBI also owns RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement) and NEFT (National Electronic Funds Transfer) payment systems in India. The National Payments Corporation of India is the operator of systems including IMPS (Immediate Payment Service), RuPay, UPI, and others.
RBI discussion paper
According to the RBI discussion paper, because UPI is a fund transfer system similar to IMPS, it might be claimed that UPI rates for fund transfer transactions should be equivalent to IMPS prices.
After getting feedback from various people in the payments system, she came up with a statement against the backdrop of RBI. This statement includes possibility of tiered charges on the transactions made through UPI services.
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