Ludhiana After years of encouraging customers to ditch cash and embrace digital payments, petrol pump owners and LPG distributors are now threatening to turn the clock back — warning that proposed Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) charges on select UPI transactions could force them to restrict digital payments and accept cash instead.
The proposed charges have triggered concern among fuel dealers and LPG distributors, who say their already-thin margins leave little room to absorb the additional cost. At a petrol pump, the quantity of fuel and the exact amount payable are displayed on the dispensing machine, with customers paying the amount shown on the meter. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has announced a new MDR framework for select UPI transactions, which is scheduled to come into effect from October 15.
Because salesmen collecting cash had earlier become targets for miscreants, ravjot Singh, owner of Resham Gas Service in Khanna, said his agency had actively promoted UPI payments.
Ashok Kumar Sachdeva, chairman of the Ludhiana Petroleum Dealers Association, said the proposed framework was not feasible for petrol pump dealers. He said the biggest difficulty was that fuel dealers could not simply pass the MDR cost on to customers. Sachdeva said the association had approached petroleum companies and sought a resolution to the issue. If the matter remained unresolved, he said, dealers could be forced to restrict UPI payments and revert to cash transactions. Gurpal Singh Mann, president of the Federation of LPG Distributors Punjab, said a large number of gas agencies currently receive most of their payments through UPI. Imposition of MDR charges, he said, could make continuing with digital transactions financially difficult for distributors.
