The Parliament approved the Taxation and other Laws (Amendment) Bill on Monday, August 10, with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman making it clear that the legislation does not impose any tax or transaction charge on users making payments through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).The government also clarified that any MDR charge, if introduced, would be threshold-based on high-value transactions rather than being imposed across all UPI transactions. The government highlighted that UPI was introduced in 2016 and has remained free of charge for both merchants and citizens since January 2020. It also highlighted India’s achievement in developing UPI into the world’s largest real-time interoperable payment system.