Any charge on UPI is tax collection: Ashneer Grover says government charging small shopkeepers for using UPI hailed as India's biggest scientific achievement for tax
BharatPe co-founder Ashneer Grover has criticised the possibility of charges being imposed on UPI transactions above Rs 2,000, saying any such levy would amount to nothing but tax collection. His comments came days after the government notified that UPI payments up to Rs 2,000 and RuPay debit card transactions cannot be charged, while leaving the position on larger transactions unclear.
Grover shared his views in a post on X, asking what exact subsidy the government provides on UPI that would now need to be recovered through a new charge. He also weighed the cost of running India's ATM and cash network against the case for UPI, and pointed to the financial strength of the Reserve Bank of India, listed banks and the National Payments Corporation of India to argue that nobody is actually losing money because of UPI.
Ashneer Grover calls it tax collection, not a service fee
Grover said in his post, "Any levy on UPI is just tax collection. UPI is the one scientific achievement of India everyone acknowledges par ab tax ki bali chadhegi."
He argued that UPI already works well for the country on its own, and that dressing up a new charge as a service fee does not change what it actually is.
