Merchant Discount Rates MDRs

Private sector lender Axis Bank on Wednesday said government mandates on the payments space ensure that no one can make money in the segment. The bank's chief executive and managing director Amitabh Chaudhry feared that smaller entities will not be able to survive amid such diktats. The comments from Axis Bank, which also runs the payments company Freecharge, come amid a debate on whether merchant discount rate (MDR) should be levied on the very popular UPI platform. The government, which wants to popularise digital payments, has been insisting that no charges should be levied. "What the government is doing is that they're taking out the entire P&L (profit and loss) opportunity for us. So if you look at the payments space, no one can make any money in the country at all. You have to use payments as a platform to make money somewhere else," Chaudhry said at the Global Fintech Fest here. The worry is that more and more of such demands will emerge, which will take away revenue and ...

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