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The national payments corporation of India (NPCI), reportedly, has directed the payment apps to stop charging platform fees for the Bharat bill payment system (BBPS) payments. This directive comes in line after a discussion paper related to such payment charges was released by Reserve Bank of India. The reports said that government is likely to treat the unified payments interface (UPI) as public good in which customers do not required paying.
UPI Twitter handle
According to news reports, PhonePe, which has the largest share of UPI transactions in India, had also started taking payment charges on some of its recharges and other payments. Similarly, in July, Paytm also started charging INR 1 for various bill payments. It is on this ground, NPCI released the directive.
Paytm responded that it immediately stopped charging the fees on the BBPS platform. PhonePe also announced that it discontinued charging payment fees. Both the companies said that it was started as an experiment and as per PhonePe, the experiment’s result was promising as 98 per cent of the consumers were ready to pay the fees, the reports added.
According to TOI report, the PhonePe responded on this through e-mail that, “We have been running experiments on charging platform fees across different categories for some time now. The result looks promising, and reflects the fact that a very large majority of Indian consumers (98 per cent) are willing to pay a nominal fee for the convenience offered by PhonePe. For now, we have temporarily paused our platform fees experiments on all eligible BBPS categories. We will share our experimental findings with NPCI or BBPS, and then seek their support in standardizing nominal platform fees.”
As per market reports, in July, the number of UPI transactions crossed the 6 billion mark. Under UPI, BBPS allows online payment of various services like bill payments which include electricity and water, and recharges.
