The government on Thursday cited a 2026 report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, which recommended a tiered Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) and revenue framework for the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), and urged that it be notified and operationalised without delay.“Five Congress MPs — P Chidambaram, Manish Tewari, Gaurav Gogoi, Kishori Lal and K Gopinath — were present on August 12 when the report was adopted, with no dissent recorded in the published minutes,” official sources said.The statement came as top Congress leaders stepped up their opposition to the proposed 0.4 per cent fee to be paid by merchants on UPI transactions above Rs 2,000.Official sources questioned why Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was opposing a proposal that, they claimed, had been supported in Parliament by his party MPs.“The Department of Financial Services must concurrently explore a self-reliant tiered revenue model,” the committee had said.It added: “The committee would like to emphasise that establishing a viable revenue mechanism is critical to ensuring that the UPI ecosystem achieves the much-needed financial stability without perpetually straining the government exchequer.”


