New Delhi, Sept. 28 -- The Supreme Court (SC) on Monday, September 28, refused to stay the Centre's decision to impose a Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) on specified Unified Payments Interface (UPI) person-to-merchant transactions of over Rs 2,000, which is set to come into effect from October 15.

The court sought responses from the Centre and others on a plea challenging the levy and directed them to file their counter affidavits within four weeks.

The Centre told the court that 96 per cent of the people using the payment gateway are exempt from the charge. Observing that the issue was less legal and more technical, the court declined to interim-stay the move.

The public interest litigation (PIL), filed by advocate Anjan Datta, challenge...