How digital payments merchants await debit card reimbursements since Jan

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In a bid to encourage electronic payments, the central government in December 2017, decided to bear the merchant discount rate (MDR) applicable on digital transactions worth Rs 2,000 via debit card, UPI and Aadhaar-based transactions starting January 2018. Nine months have gone by, but the digital payments industry still awaits reimbursements.

According to a report by Mint, the government of India has already reimbursed the MDRs applicable on these transactions for a period from January to June to the banks. However, the banks have not reimbursed the amount to merchant aggregators and acquirers.

“As far as I am aware, none of the banks has reimbursed for debit card/UPI/AEPS transactions processed from 1 January 2018 till date. Also, major public sector banks like State Bank of India have announced that they will only reimburse 0.15% of the transaction amount to service providers on its debit card transactions accepted at a point-of-sale terminals,” said Vishwas Patel, chairman of Payments Council of India (PCI) told Mint.