Mumbai, Feb. 1 -- The central government has cut the outlay for an incentive scheme for transactions undertaken on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and homegrown card network RuPay platforms by nearly 10% for the next financial year.

Even as transaction volumes for both UPI and RuPay have continued to rise, the outlay announced in the budget on Sunday has been cut to Rs.2,000 crore for FY27, compared to Rs.2,196 crore in FY26 (revised estimate). The initial budgeted outlay for FY26 was Rs.437 crore.

As part of the incentive scheme, the government subsidises such transactions for the promotion of RuPay debit cards and low-value BHIM-UPI P2M (person-to-merchant) transactions. The government had subsidised transactions to the extent of...