The topic of UPI transaction charges has stirred debate across the country, but the government has once again clarified that there is currently no proposal to levy fees on Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions. As per The Indian Express, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary, in a written reply to the Lok Sabha, stated that there are no plans to introduce charges on UPI. This assurance follows concerns raised by RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra’s earlier comments, which had sparked speculation about UPI remaining free.
Chaudhary reaffirmed the government’s commitment to promoting free UPI transactions to encourage digital payments. He highlighted that under an incentive scheme promoting RuPay debit cards and low-value UPI payments, the government has disbursed around ₹8,730 crore over the last four years to subsidise associated costs.
Although end users remain unaffected, some banks have started charging payment aggregators. ICICI Bank, for example, has introduced a 0.02–0.04% fee per transaction for aggregators like Razorpay and PayU. Despite the debate, UPI usage is booming—with 19.47 billion transactions worth ₹25.08 lakh crore in July 2025 alone—demonstrating India’s growing reliance on digital payments.
