New Delhi, Aug. 8 -- The Payments Council of India (PCI) has supported discussions around introducing a merchant discount rate (MDR) for the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), stating that sustained investment is essential to maintain the country's real-time digital payments infrastructure.

PCI, an industry body representing digital payments companies, said the growing scale of UPI requires continuous spending on technology, cybersecurity, fraud prevention and customer support to ensure reliability and security.

In a post on X, PCI said, "As the ecosystem continues to expand, discussions are taking place on how to sustainably support the infrastructure that enables billions of secure transactions every month, while continuing to ensure t...