PhonePe to charge you fee of Re 1 for paying mobile bills now

After all its rivals started to charge a fee on payments for mobile bills, Walmart owned PhonePe has followed suit and started charging for mobile recharges. The processing fee is currently levied on mobile recharges only and won’t be applicable to all PhonePe users initially, since this is done on an experimental basis.

The processing fee is applicable on mobile recharges only for now and that too for transactions of above INR 50. Any mobile recharge with a lesser value will evade the processing fee whereas the recharges of the value between INR 50 and INR 100 will attract a processing fee of INR 1. All mobile recharges of above INR 100 will see a processing fee of INR 2.

PhonePe starts charging fee for mobile recharges

"On recharges, we are running a very small-scale experiment where a few users are paying for mobile recharges. Recharges below INR 50 are not charged, recharges between INR 50 and INR100 are charged INR 1, and above INR 100 are charged INR 2. Essentially, as a part of the experiment, a majority of users are either not paying anything or paying INR 1," PhonePe said.

Hence, it depends whether you account falls under the experimental group. Most users are most likely to not pay the processing fee at the early stages. However, if the experimental period is successful, PhonePe may implmenet for all mobile recharges for value above INR 50. The company may also start charging a processing fee for other transactions in the future.

PhonePe also continues to charge for all transactions made via credit cards similar to all other payments services. Note that other payment services do not attract any processing fee on PhonePe at the moment; this also includes money transfers and wallet payments.

“We are not the only player or payment platform charging a fee. Charging a small fee on bill payments is now a standard industry practice and is done by other biller websites and payment platforms also. We charge a processing fee (called as convenience fee on other platforms) on payments with credit cards only,” clarifies PhonePe.