Plea in Supreme Court challenges UPI fee on transactions above Rs 2,000

A public interest petition was lodged with the Supreme Court on Wednesday, contesting the government's decision to impose a merchant discount rate (MDR) on specific Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions exceeding Rs 2,000. This challenge emerged just a day after the Ministry of Finance unveiled the fee structure. The court has not yet scheduled the matter for consideration.

The legal action questions the September 14 notification issued under Section 10A of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007, which had granted statutory "no-charge protection" to two payment modes: RuPay-powered debit cards—without any monetary limit—and UPI transactions up to Rs 2,000. The petition contends that the government's move effectively nullified the zero-MDR provision for UPI transactions above Rs 2,000, a policy that had been in effect since January 2020.