Indian Trade Bodies Cancel No UPI Day Protest

Indian trade bodies have canceled a nationwide No UPI Day protest scheduled for October 2 after meeting with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in New Delhi. The protest, organized by groups including the All India Merchant Retailers Association, involved retailers planning to cover UPI QR codes with black cloth to oppose a proposed 0.4 percent Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) fee on transactions exceeding Rs 2,000.

A delegation led by Praveen Khandelwal of the Confederation of All India Traders met with Sitharaman on September 30 to argue that the fee, scheduled for October 15, would burden small and medium businesses operating on narrow margins. The delegation requested that the government defer the fee due to the festive season, increase the fee threshold from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5 lakh, and exempt merchant-to-merchant transactions.

The National Payments Corporation of India previously countered these concerns, stating that the fee would not impact most small merchants because over 96 percent of transactions fall below the Rs 2,000 threshold. However, following assurances from Sitharaman that the government would give due consideration to the trading community's concerns, the All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation and the All India Mobile Retailers Association withdrew their calls for the protest.