Investing via RBI Retail Direct platform: Who will pay UPI MDR from 15 October? Experts weigh in — SkimNews
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- RBI Retail Direct lets retail investors buy T-bills, G-Secs, State Development Loans, Sovereign Gold Bonds, and Floating Rate Savings Bonds directly without a broker, using UPI as the payment rail.
- UPI MDR for capital market transactions is set at 0.02% of transaction value, capped at ₹300 per transaction, effective 15 October.
- BankBazaar's Adhil Shetty calculated that a ₹1 lakh investment would attract ₹20 in MDR but said that amount cannot be passed on to the investor under the new framework.
- ScoreMe's Ayush Jindal pointed to the RBI's Retail Direct FAQ, which states investors must bear applicable payment gateway charges despite the platform itself being fee-free.
- Ezeepay's Shams Tabrej said it would be premature to attribute MDR liability to the RBI without seeing the contractual arrangements between the central bank and participating payment-system entities.
- MIDASX's Aakash Bansal described RBI Retail Direct as the investment interface for government securities while banks and payment-system participants enable the underlying UPI transfer.
Why it matters: With ₹20 in MDR on a ₹1 lakh purchase that brokers cannot pass to investors, payment-system participants or the RBI itself may end up absorbing the cost — and the RBI's own FAQ reserves the right to charge investors gateway fees, leaving the final answer dependent on unpublished contracts between the central bank and its payment partners.
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