National Payments Corporation of India's chief Dilip Asbe on Thursday said large merchants may have to pay charges for UPI-based payments in the next three years.

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At present, all the energies are focused on providing a viable payment alternative to cash and increasing the acceptability of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), NPCI's chief executive and managing director said at an event here.

However, in the future, a lot of money will be required in getting newer innovations, more people to use the ecosystem and incentives like cashbacks, he said, adding that another 50 crore people need to be pulled into the system.

"From the long-term perspective, a reasonable charge, not on the small merchants but the larger merchants, will come. I don't know when it will come, whether it is one year, two years, three years down the line," he said at the event organised by the Bombay Chartered Accountants Society (BCAS).

A charge on UPI has been a contentious issue, with murmurs from the industry to introduce such charges. At present, the government compensates players in the ecosystem for such transactions, which helps in the broader formalisation aim. Asbe said there has not been the "smallest of resistance" from the broader ecosystem till now, which has helped the system grow.

Meanwhile, Asbe also pitched for the need to increase spends on cybersecurity and information security to up to 25 per cent of a bank's IT budget from the present 10 per cent.
The security threat is "very real" and gives everybody in the ecosystem sleepless nights, he added.

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