The government questioned the basis of Rahul Gandhi’s criticism of the decision to levy a fee on Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payments above ₹2,000 crore for merchants, noting that a parliamentary standing committee had endorsed the move and that Congress members of the panel had supported it.
A senior government functionary explained that the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance had advocated a tiered Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) and revenue framework for UPI and insisted that it be notified and implemented without delay. The committee’s report was adopted on August 12, when five Congress MPs—P. Chidambaram, Manish Tewari, Gaurav Gogoi, Kishori Lal and K. Gopinath—were present and no dissent was recorded in the minutes.
Gandhi, in his remarks, accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of “prostrating” before U.S. President Donald Trump and of handing over large sums to the United States, and the opposition demanded a rollback of the fee. The committee report highlighted a stark mismatch between the ₹2,000‑crore allocation for the fee and the industry’s estimated operational cost of ₹20,700 crore, and warned that any delay in notifying the framework would leave payment service providers reliant on inadequate subsidies, threatening investments in cybersecurity, fraud prevention and network infrastructure.
The committee also examined the incentive scheme for promoting RuPay debit cards and low‑value BHIM‑UPI transactions. It noted that the ₹2,000‑crore budgetary allocation for 2026‑27 covers only a fraction of the industry’s actual costs and potential MDR collections, creating a structural funding gap that could impede long‑term infrastructure investment. The report urged the Department of Financial Services to explore a self‑reliant, tiered revenue model while maintaining the three‑year incentive scheme and cashback components to democratise digital payments in Tier‑3 to Tier‑6 cities, emphasizing the need for a viable revenue mechanism to ensure the UPI ecosystem’s financial sustainability without unduly burdening the government exchequer.
