Aug 20, 2026 15:09 pm IST

Opinion | India's UPI Crore Has Created A Difficult, Rs 20,000-Crore Question

UPI's whole miracle was the Rs 30 payment it charged nothing for. But how long can it stay free?

Subimal Bhattacharjee Subimal Bhattacharjee Columnist

Subimal Bhattacharjee Columnist

Parliament has reopened a question that the country thought was settled: should UPI ever charge? On August 6, the Lok Sabha passed the Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, by a voice vote, and on August 10, the Rajya Sabha, since this is a Money Bill, returned it after discussion, completing the process. It now goes to the President for assent. The change reads small on paper and large in effect. It amends Section 10A of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007, which until now shielded UPI and RuPay debit from any charge because they were prescribed under the Income-Tax Act. That automatic shield is gone. From here, whether a payment mode stays free depends on what the government chooses to notify.

The case for charging begins, reasonably enough, with a bill nobody disputes. Running the world's largest real-time payment network is not free. Every tap that looks instant sets off authorisation, settlement, reconciliation, fraud screening, dispute handling, cloud capacity, and round-the-clock monitoring, and all of it costs money. One estimate puts the yearly cost of running UPI and RuPay debit infrastructure as high as ₹20,000 crore. As volumes keep climbing - July 2026 alone saw 2,366 crore transactions worth ₹29.9 lakh........

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