HDFC is waving off MDR as an excuse to improve its bottom line: Petrol Dealers Association

President of the All India Petroleum Dealers Association on Sunday said the HDFC Bank has waived the Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) as an excuse to improve its bottom line through transactions at fuel stations.

"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," Ajay Bansal, President, All India Petroleum Dealers Association said.

"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.

Bansal further stated that this decision is only for those banks that have levied this charge.

'Dealers in our association using POS machines of other banks can accept card payments. The petrol pumps are already operating on a very low margin and we cannot afford this deduction. But gas station will accept payments through PayTM and BHIM Apps," he added.

Bansal said that the authorities had already informed the Petroleum Ministry and Ministry of Finance of their decision.

However, ICICI bank clarified that they will not be charging any transaction fee on card payment from tomorrow.

Meanwhile, a HDFC Bank spokesperson in a statement said that it was an industry decision based on government notification.

"HDFC Bank may have been the first to notify dealers," it added.

Petrol pumps across the country will not accept credit and debit card payments for fuel sales from tomorrow after banks decided to put transaction (MDR) charge on them instead of consumers.

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.