Fintech Brief — September 16, 2026
NPCI Notifies the MDR: 0.4% on UPI Above ₹2,000, From October 15
The wait ended in numbers: NPCI has formally notified a merchant discount rate of 0.4% on person-to-merchant UPI transactions above ₹2,000, effective October 15, 2026, with person-to-person transfers untouched and a per-transaction cap of ₹300 for payments of ₹75,000 and above (Economic Times). This lands two days after the Finance Ministry statutorily protected transactions up to ₹2,000 and RuPay debit card payments from any charge, completing the two-piece structure the August amendment to the Payment and Settlement Systems Act anticipated: free below the line, chargeable above it. The scale context is what makes this manageable — UPI moved 2,451 crore transactions worth ₹29.9 lakh crore in August alone, and NPCI’s FAQ estimates about 96% of P2M transactions will remain unaffected because they sit below ₹2,000. The open question is the one that matters to consumers: who actually bears the fee at checkout. Finance Minister Sitharaman has said merchant charges cannot be passed on to customers, but the operational design — a 22-member UPI & Services Steering Committee including the Indian Banks’ Association and Payments Council of India — now has to translate that assurance into enforceable rules, and NPCI is also proposing a dedicated fund to subsidise acceptance infrastructure in Tier 3-6 centres, the Northeast, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, with the framework to be finalised with the RBI within three months. Watch the pass-through: a ₹25,000 purchase would carry up to ₹100 of MDR, and whether that surfaces as a surcharge line or quietly inside the price is the difference between a merchant fee and a consumer tax.
Moneyview Halves Its IPO Fresh Issue to ₹750 Crore
Fintech unicorn Moneyview has cut the fresh issue component of its IPO in half to ₹750 crore from the ₹1,500 crore in its draft papers, and trimmed the offer for sale to 10.04 crore shares from 13.61 crore, per a notice to investors dated September 14 (Moneycontrol). The mechanics were enabled by an April 2026 SEBI rule letting issuers shrink a fresh issue by up to 50% without refiling the DRHP — Moneyview applied on September 3, SEBI signed off on September 10, and the revised allocation sends ₹325 crore toward loan disbursals under default-loss-guarantee arrangements and ₹250 crore into NBFC subsidiary Whizdm Finance. A halved primary raise from a digital lender two months after approval is a signal worth reading: either the growth plan needs less capital than the March 2026 draft assumed, or the window for richly-valued lending IPOs is tighter than founders hoped. The company has not disclosed a reason or a listing date; investors will get their answer in the price band.
Fibe Clears SEBI for Its ₹750 Crore IPO
The lending IPO pipeline is not thinning — it is queuing. Fibe, the Pune-based digital lender formerly known as EarlySalary, has received SEBI approval for an IPO comprising a ₹750 crore fresh issue and an offer for sale of 40.07 million shares by backers including TPG’s The Rise Fund, Norwest Venture Partners and Eight Roads Ventures (Whalesbook). Founded in 2015 by Akshay Mehrotra and Ashish Goyal, Fibe graduated from small-ticket salary advances to longer-tenure unsecured personal loans and purpose-linked financing across healthcare, education and insurance. The numbers on the table: FY26 operating revenue of ₹1,585 crore, net profit of ₹257 crore, and assets under management of ₹8,603 crore, with ₹562.6 crore of the fresh proceeds earmarked to capitalise its NBFC arm, EarlySalary Services. With Moneyview and Fibe both moving in the same week, public-market investors are about to price digital lending as a sector, not a story — credit-quality disclosures in the coming prospectuses will set the terms for everyone behind them in the queue.
Flam Raises $40 Million Series B — With Shah Rukh Khan on the Cap Table
AI content startup Flam has raised $40 million in a Series B led by QED Investors, with Shah Rukh Khan, Claypond Capital, Martin Chavez, Olivier Pomel and Venky Harinarayan joining alongside existing investors RTP Global and Dovetail (YourStory). The San Francisco-and-Bengaluru company, founded in 2021 by Shourya Agarwal, Malhar Patil and Amit Gaiki, builds interactive video, 3D product experiences and conversational visual agents for enterprise customers, and will put the money into R&D, product expansion and enterprise sales; it previously raised a $14 million Series A led by RTP Global in May 2025. No valuation was disclosed. For consumers, the interesting bit is where this tech points: ad formats that respond and transact inside the frame — engaging, certainly, and one more reason the rules on dark patterns and disclosure in advertising need to keep pace with the formats.