99.9% UPI transactions remain free , says NPCI

                                   Before somedays people were panicked that they need to pay aa fee of 1.1% for the UPI payments which exceeds over 2000 RS . Now the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) which operates India’s flagship payments platform, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) on Wednesday clarified that about 99.9% of total transactions on UPI are  done through linking any bank account by any UPI related applications.These account to account related transactions will be completely for customers and merchants.On March 24, NPCI introduced a circular which says that interchange fees applicable to merchant transactions through prepaid payments instruments (PPI) on the UPI platform. This came on effect because of RBI made it mandatory for PPI’s to be a part of interoperable UPI ecosystem.So from April 1, wallet holders will be able to use their payments to merchants through any QR code.These transactions will have a charge of 1.1% if the amount exceeds 2000 RS .The interchange fee will be charged from the merchant bank to the issuer of the wallet.Also the wallet or the PPI issuer, will have to pay 15 basis points as wallet loading charge to the remitter bank if the transaction amount is above 2000 RS .The interchange amount is not to be paid to transaction related to person to person and for small merchants.This gives the opportunity to the customer to choose his mode of payments.

                      According to Mihir Gandhi, partner and leader-payments is"The interoperability among PPIs via UPI will make the prepaid instruments more attractive for various use cases and ultimately increase the number of digital payment transactions," he said.

                     Paytm payments bank which have 60% of wallet transactions said that all its full KYC customers will now be able to make payments on every UPI QR codes and online merchants where UPI payments is acceptable. So the bank will earn 1.1% interchange revenue when Paytm customers make payments on merchants.Since the wallet loading charges will be paid by issuers like Paytm payments bank to remitter bank, these changes impose regulator defined interchange commercials.The pricing structure will be reviewed on or before September of this year.