Festive season

New Delhi (Gurpreet Singh): Retail and apparel industry bodies have raised serious concerns over the government's decision to levy a 0.4 per cent Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) on Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions exceeding ₹2,000, warning that the added operational expense could stall digital adoption and push small retailers back toward cash transactions ahead of the peak festive shopping season. The new fee structure, which marks the end of nearly six years of fully zero-MDR payments on UPI, is scheduled to take effect on October 15. While ordinary person-to-person transfers and low-value transactions below ₹2,000 remain completely exempt, the cost…