new delhi in order to encourage digital transactions the finance ministry today asked psu banks to restrict fees on payments through imps and upi to the extent that is applicable for neft fund transfer of over rs 1000 as per rbi norms neft transfers of up to rs 10000 attract rs 25 fee from rs 100001 lakh the fee is rs 5 on rs 12 lakh it is rs 15 and beyond rs 2 lakh it is rs 25 service tax is charged in addition to this for unstructured supplementary service data ussd transactions above rs 1000 the ministry said a further discount of 50 paise on these rates shall apply ussd is mobile short code message and used mainly for banking services on feature phone the ussd fee is rs 150 which has been waived till december 30 2016 in order to further promote digital and card payments the ministry has issued a direction in public interest to all public sector banks said an official statement in accordance with this these banks shall not charge fees for transactions settled on immediate payment service imps and unified payments interface upi in excess of rates charged for national electronic funds transfer neft for transactions above rs 1000 with service tax being charged at actuals it said imps is an interbank electronic instant mobile money transfer service through mobile phones the upi app enables customers to make online as well as offline payment to merchants from their bank accounts without typing card or net bankingwallet details and ifsc code this direction will apply for all transactions up to march 31 2017 for ussd transactions above rs 1000 a further discount of fifty paise on these rates shall apply it added in order to promote digital transaction niti aayog has announced two schemes lucky grahak yojana and digi dhan vyapar yojana to be launched on december 25 the schemes will cover small transactions between rs 50 and rs 3000 transactions using rupay ussd upi and aadhar enabled payment system aeps will be covered under this scheme payments made through credit cards and ewallets would not be covered in line with the central governments objective of promotion of payments through cards and digital means over payments in cash the reserve bank has recently rationalised customer charges for transactions up to rs 1000 settled on imps upi and ussd from january 1march 31 2017 rbi has also rationalised the merchant discount rate mdr for debit card transactions up to rs 2000 for the 3month period