On September 14, 2026, India's Finance Ministry confined the zero-charge protection for UPI payments to transactions up to Rs 2,000, and on September 15 NPCI set a merchant discount rate (MDR) on person-to-merchant UPI payments above that: 0.4%, capped at Rs 300 for transactions of Rs 75,000 and above, effective October 15, 2026. A flat Rs 5 applies to railways, telecom, insurance, fuel and agriculture, and 0.02% to capital-market payments. Advocate Anjan Datta has since filed a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court. It names the Union government, the RBI, NPCI and the UPI & Services Steering Committee, and attacks both the fee structure and the amended Section 10A of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007 (MediaNama).
The fee itself is the smaller issue. The bigger one is the legal architecture that allowed it.
The strongest case for the fee
The government's argument is not frivolous. A payment rail that processed 24.51 billion transactions in August 2026 has real costs: fraud management, dispute resolution, bank-side infrastructure and capacity. Someone pays for these costs. When merchants pay nothing, banks and the state carry them, and the incentive to invest in reliability weakens over time. A charge only on larger merchant payments, with person-to-person transfers left free, is a reasonably targeted way to bring in revenue. The LiveLaw report records that small merchants receiving up to Rs 1 lakh a month keep zero MDR, and that about 96% of merchant transactions are said to stay unaffected.
The arithmetic also looks modest. The average UPI ticket in August was about Rs 1,217, so ordinary purchases fall below the threshold. A Rs 5,000 purchase would carry a Rs 20 charge. Compared with card acceptance costs, that is not obviously punitive.
Where the design is weak
The design problem starts with the statute. Section 10A previously tied the no-charge protection to electronic payment modes prescribed under the Income-tax Act. The Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026 was introduced in the Lok Sabha on August 4, passed there on August 6 and cleared the Rajya Sabha on August 10, per PRS Legislative Research. Its Section 10A change replaces that reference with modes "notified by the Central Government", according to SCC Online's summary.
So the free-of-charge status of UPI, the payment mode that sets the terms for India's digital economy, now rests on an executive notification rather than on statute. The Finance Minister's office described the amendment as an enabling provision that imposes no charge by itself. That is technically true, and it is also the problem. An enabling clause with no stated criteria, rates, ceilings or consultation requirement lets a notification do what a law used to have to do.
The petition puts this in constitutional terms. It says the fee structure is arbitrary under Article 14, in part because RuPay debit cards keep their protection without a monetary limit while UPI's protection stops at Rs 2,000. It also says no data was disclosed to justify the Rs 2,000 threshold or the Rs 1 lakh exemption, and that the levy came without transparency or public consultation (MediaNama). Whether the court agrees is uncertain. But the absence of published reasoning is a fair criticism whatever the outcome.
Why proportionality matters here
Three points follow from a pro-innovation, evidence-based view.
- Show the numbers. If the Rs 2,000 threshold and the 0.4% rate come from cost data, publish that data. A rate with no visible basis invites the arbitrariness challenge now before the court.
- Cost pass-through is a real risk. The petition argues merchants will pass the charge to consumers regardless of any prohibition. Small businesses running on thin margins often surcharge or steer buyers to cash. That erodes the formalisation gains UPI delivered.
- Ceilings belong in law. Rate caps and exemptions such as the Rs 300 cap and the Rs 1 lakh threshold sit in notifications, so they can move without a legislative vote. Merchants and fintechs cannot plan around terms that a committee can rewrite.
The RBI already holds broad authority over payment systems under the PSS Act: authorisation, standard-setting, inspection and directions, as its own FAQ describes. A sector regulator with a statutory mandate is a more natural home for pricing rules than an executive notification with no published criteria.
What to watch
The fee takes effect on October 15, so the Supreme Court has about four weeks to decide whether to look at the matter before it does. Whatever it decides on interim relief, the durable fix is legislative: state the criteria for notifying protected payment modes, require published cost justification for any MDR, and set a review interval. Charging for a service that costs money to run is defensible. Charging without stated limits is not, because it makes every future rate a discretionary decision.