Mumbai, Sept. 30 -- Eighty six percent of UPI, person to merchant (P2M), transactions are below Rs.500. Over the last decade, slowly but surely, our expenses have gotten invisible.

No longer is it the large, memorable spending that shrinks our bank account balance. Instead, it is the various, fragmented small spends that add up to a big number by the end of the month. The growth in the volume and value of UPI transactions has long surpassed other digital mediums.

There has been some speculation that the recently announced Merchant Discount Rate of 0.4% on transactions above Rs.2,000 could eventually get passed on to the customer and become a deterrent for UPI users for payments to merchants. But as finance ministry data shows, the avera...