New Delhi, RBI: The efforts are still on from the government and other players like the RBI. The Reserve Bank of India, RBI in order to promote more cashless transactions in the country, it has given all the banks freedom to fix bank service charges for transactions.

The Reserve Bank of India, RBI has removed dues on interest rates on credit card.

The Interest rates are determined by the banks with the approval of their respective Board of Directors subject to regulatory guidelines on interest rate on advances issued by RBI from time to time. However RBI does not keep information on the rate of commission charged.

The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development ( NABARD) has approved a scheme to the merchants for giving 0.5 percent commission on payments made through the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS).

Debit card transactions:

On debit card transactions on Point of Sale (PoS) device Machines, between January 1 and March 31, 2017, Merchant Discount Rate, MDR  has been fixed at 0.25 percent for transaction value up to Rs. 1,000, and for the debit card transactions value between Rs. 1,000 and Rs. 2,000, MDR has been capped at 0.5 percent.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided that till March 3, 2017, banks and prepaid payment instrument issuers would not put any charges on the customers for transactions up to Rs. 1,000 settled on Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD).

The Central Government has issued a statement in the public interest for all public sector banks, to not to charge fees for transactions settled on UPI and IMPS in excess of rates charged for National Electronic Funds Transfer ( NEFT) for transaction above Rs. 1,000, with service tax being charged at actual.

For the USSD transactions till March 3, 2017 above Rs. 1,000, a further 50 paisa discount is provided.

NPCI has further waived off switching fees for RuPay Card transactions (both for PoS and e-commerce), IMPS, National Unified USSD Platform (NUUP), UPI and AEPS, with effect from January 1 to March 31, 2017.

All Credit card, debit card, charge card and any other payment card services by banks have been exempted from payment of service tax for transactions of up to Rs. 2,000.

The central Government has introduced Lucky Grahak Yojana for customers and Digi Dhan Yojana for merchants to promote means of cashless transactions and to promote Digital India initiatives.