NPCI CEO says expect large merchants to pay reasonable charges for UPI payments in...

A charge on UPI transactions has been a contentious issue for the past few months. Presently, the central government compensates players in the ecosystem for such transactions, which helps in the broader formalisation aim. Now, National Payments Corporation of India's (NPCI) chief Dilip Asbe has said that large merchants may have to pay charges for UPI-based payments in the next three years, PTI reported.

"From the long-term perspective, a reasonable charge, not on the small merchants but the larger merchants, will come. I don't know when it will come, whether it is one year, two years, three years down the line," he said at the event organised by the Bombay Chartered Accountants Society (BCAS) in Mumbai on Thursday.

At present, all the energies are focused on providing a viable payment alternative to cash and increasing the acceptability of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), NPCI's chief executive officer (CEO) and managing director (MD) said at the event. He added that in the future, a lot of money will be required to get newer innovations, more people to use the ecosystem and incentives like cashback. Another 50 crore people need to be pulled into the system, Asbe said, adding that, there has not been the 'smallest of resistance' from the broader ecosystem till now, which has helped the system grow.

Meanwhile, Asbe also pitched for the need to increase spending on cybersecurity and information security to up to 25 per cent of a bank's IT budget from the present 10 per cent. The security threat is 'very real' and gives everybody in the ecosystem sleepless nights, he added.

(With inputs from PTI)