More than half of the street vendors surveyed across 14 States and Union Territories said they would reduce their acceptance of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payments if the proposed merchant discount rate (MDR) was introduced, as per a study by the Indian School of Business.Conducted between September 24 and October 10, the survey covered 722 vendors across 64 urban local bodies in Chandigarh, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana.Of the respondents, 64.8% were men and 35.2% women, said the authors of the report, Prasanna Tantri, Anand Sudhakaran, and Mohan Ramanath. About 67% of those surveyed accepted UPI payments, while around 70% said their payments to suppliers exceeded ₹2,000, potentially exposing them to the proposed 0.4% charge.The proportion of vendors who said they would reduce UPI acceptance was 53% in Tier-I cities and 45% each in Tier-II and Tier-III locations.
While 36% of Tier-I respondents said they would not reduce acceptance, the corresponding figures were 25% in Tier-II and 27% in Tier-III locations.About one in five vendors — 30% in Tier-I cities, 14% in Tier-II, and 19% in Tier-III locations — said they would pass on the charge to customers, according to the survey.The study also found that 10.4% had faced additional charges from suppliers for UPI payments in the preceding 10 days. Among them, 30.8% said they would pass on the cost to customers, compared with 16.2% of those who had not faced such charges.
Published - November 05, 2026 12:16 am IST