Budget 2020: Nirmala Sitharaman likely to announce big relief for debit card users on 1st Feb; deets inside

The nation is waiting for February 1, 2020, as Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the budget in the Parliament. Several expectations have been made by experts that what are the announcement could be made by Finance Minister. One of the reports by CNBC Awaaz said that the government could exempt merchants from paying merchant discount rate (MDR) cost for payments made through debit cards.

Earlier in December 2019, the government had announced that MDR charges will not be applicable to a transaction made through RuPay and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platforms. These charges on these modes of payments were removed from January 1, 2020.

This decision was taken to promote digital transactions among users. Meanwhile, MasterCard and Visa cards are permitted to charge MDR.

MDR is the cost that a merchant pays to a bank in order to accept payment from their customers via digital mode. MDR is expressed in percentage of the transaction amount.

Last year, Nirmala Sitharama had proposed that businesses should offer low-cost digital modes of payment such as BHIM UPI, UPI QR Code, Aadhaar Pay, Debit Cards, NEFT, RTGS, etc. to their customers, and no charge or MDR should be implied on its customers. She made this announced in a bid to promote online payment.

She also added that companies whose turnover is over Rs 50 crore will have to provide payment facility through RuPay Debit card and UPI QR code to their customers.

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