Pinarayi Vijayan Calls UPI Fee Plan 'Daylight Robbery', Seeks Rollback

Leader of the Opposition Pinarayi Vijayan has criticised the Union government's move to introduce a fee on Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions, describing it as "daylight robbery" and demanding that the decision be withdrawn immediately.

In a statement, Mr. Vijayan said the measure would turn the UPI system into a means for fintech companies to earn profits, a course he said was unacceptable. He argued that the burden of the levy would eventually be passed on to the common man.

"Although the government says the fee will be collected from merchants, they will hike prices to push the burden on to consumers," he said.

Mr. Vijayan alleged that the Union government was seeking to make digital payments a source of income for itself after having encouraged people to shift to UPI transactions in the name of 'Digital India'. Digital payments, he noted, were promoted on the assurance that they would remain free of charge.

He said that trusting this assurance, ordinary citizens, workers in the unorganised sector and small traders had adopted digital transactions in large numbers. The decision to impose a 0.4% fee on transactions above ₹2,000 amounted to picking pockets, he added.