💬 My kirana owner is worried about the new UPI fee on bigger payments

I was at my regular kirana store in Mehdipatnam on Saturday when the owner showed me a notice on his phone. He said a new fee is coming on some UPI payments to shops, and that it applies only to bigger payments above 2,000 rupees. As he explained it, the fee is around 0.4 percent and the shop has to pay it, not the customer. Small payments up to 2,000 rupees and person to person transfers stay free, he said. He was not angry, but he was worried. His margin on rice and oil is already thin, and he takes UPI for almost every sale now. He said 5 years ago customers paid cash and he had no fee at all. Now customers expect UPI, and cash is rare. If the fee comes on bigger bills, he said, he may have to raise prices slightly or ask people to pay cash for large orders. I do not know all the details, so please check the official notice before you trust my version. But I wonder how this will feel for small shops, vegetable sellers and tiffin centres that only take UPI. Do you know any shop owner who has already changed something because of this? Would you pay a few rupees extra to a shop if it meant they could keep UPI?

Our local tea stall man says he will not worry as long as the 2,000 rupee limit holds, since most of his bills are 20 and 30 rupees.

My brother runs a small mobile shop in Karimnagar, and he said almost the same thing about margins last week. He takes UPI for 90 percent of sales, so even a small cut matters to him. I think the fee on larger bills is easier to accept than one on everything. Still, I would like to see how the shops adjust.