After six years of free use, India has decided to ‌start charging merchants a fee of 0.4% for UPI transactions of more than $21, known as the Merchant Discount Rate, with some exclusions, though person-to-person transfers remain free ↧ India's UPI fee shake-up: What changes and why it matters Using mobile phones to scan a QR code for payments has become near ubiquitous behaviour in India over the last decade, thanks to a widely used homegrown network, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).