Ending nearly six years of a fully free Unified Payments Interface (UPI) network for merchants, the government on Tuesday introduced a 0.4 per cent transaction fee on payment above Rs 2000, capped at Rs 300 for payments of Rs 75,000 and above, from October 15, while explicitly ring-fencing everyday person-to-person transfers from any charge.

The carefully calibrated move signals the end of an era for the world’s largest real-time payments system even as the government tries to avoid alarming the hundreds of millions of users who use it daily.