Petrol pumps defer decision to not accept card payments till January 13

New Delhi: Petrol pump owners on Sunday night deferred till January 13 their decision to not accept credit and debit card payments for fuel sales after banks put off the move to levy the transaction (MDR) charge.

To promote cash-less transactions, the government had waived the Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) on fuel purchase post demonetisation for consumers.

But after the expiry of the 50-day window, the banks have decided to levy MDR on petrol pump owners.

This meant petrol pumps having to bear 1 percent on all credit card transactions and between 0.25 percent and 1 percent on all debit card transactions from January 9.

In protest of the move, petrol pump operators had decided not to accept card payments from Monday.

AIPDA also had decided to defer the agitation till January 13," said Ajay Bansal, President, All India Petroleum Dealers Association (AIPDA).

Ajay Bansal, President, All India Petroleum Dealers Association, had earlier in the day had said the bank had quoted RBI circular of December 16, 2016, for its action.

"Unfortunately, the circular has no reference to credit card charges or for not passing the same to the customers. We feel that HDFC Bank is using this as an excuse to improve their bottom line through transactions at fuel stations," he had said.

He had said petrol pump margins are fixed on a per kilolitre basis and do not have any scope to absorb these charges.

"We have specific mechanism to compute the margin and these do not have any scope for credit card MDR. This will lead to financial loses for the dealers," he said, adding that credit card machine issuers are also delaying settlements of dues.

He had informed the petrol pumps have "decided to stop accepting payment through credit/debit cards from January 9, 2017".

"All POS (point of sale) machine issuing banks who are not charging the same and are willing to adhere to existing commercial arrangements should correspond with us to let us inform our members to continue with accepting cards on their machines," Bansal said.

"Petrol pump dealers across the country, including those in Gujarat, will stop accepting money through debit and credit cards from tomorrow to protest an RBI circular asking banks to debit 1 percent from petrol pump dealers account on payments through cards from January 9," said Gujarat State Petroleum Dealers Association president Arvind Thakkar.

 With PTI Inputs