Well, it’s here – Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) for UPI payments in India for select merchants and transactions. And the Government has gone through great lengths to tell everyone that UPI remains free for consumers. I mean, just look at one of their recent posts on X:

UPI: Same Ease for You

✅ All person-to-person transactions- FREE

✅96% of person-to-merchant transactions- FREE

✅ Essential & government services up to 2,000- FREE

✅ All RuPay debit card transactions- FREE pic.twitter.com/Z32xAUnxVk

— Ministry of Finance (@FinMinIndia) September 19, 2026

But we all know that UPI won’t remain free, not for long.

UPI Charges To Be 0.4% For Some Payments Above Rs 2,000. For merchant categories like railways, telecom services, insurance, and fuel, a flat rate of Rs 5 will be levied on UPI payments above Rs 2,000.

And like any tax or free, it will be passed on to the consumer.

NCPI launches some AI stuff and card issuing ATM. Whatever. We’re pretty bummed out because of this MDR.

Already, fuel stations in Mumbai will refuse to accept UPI. Seems like cash is going to once again become king.

My favourite bit of news is that someone made an app that automatically splits payments above 2,000 rupees into chunks of payments that max out at 1,999 rupees to avoid MDR.

Jugaad.

Headlines

• Meta has agreed to report cases involving child sexual abuse to appropriate law enforcement agencies in India, according to government sources, as the Centre steps up scrutiny of social media platforms over harmful online content.The government has described children’s online safety as a “fundamental principle” and “non-negotiable”, warning platforms that action will be taken against those that fail to proactively identify and remove harmful content.The Centre is also engaging with other platforms on faster takedowns and stronger safeguards, amid growing concerns over child sexual abuse material, deepfakes and other illegal content online.
• Meta launches Meta One. This is to shove Meta AI down our throats.
• IPO bandwagon: InsuranceDekho, an insure tech startup.
• Amazon Pay expanding insurance offerings.
• PhonePe shuts down one small engineering office in the US.
• VinFast is planning two India-specific EVs.
• Zomato charging more for cash on delivery.
• Sarvam launches self-improving bank in partnership with IDFC First Bank.
• India to question Google over 500,000 Gmail accounts allegedly used to send fake bomb threats.

CCPA (Central Consumer Protection Authority) news:

• Probe into Apple for their iOS software update a couple of years ago, saying it was designed to give call drop issues which forced consumers to pay for repairs and ultimately phone upgrades.
• Fined Rapido for advance tipping prompts – where users were prompted to tip before a ride ended.