From 15 October, UPI will no longer be free for merchants. It stays free for you. That is the whole news, and if that is all you wanted, you can stop reading here.But the messages have started. Will my SIP cost more? Should I move my lump sum before the 15th? Should I go back to net banking? The answer to all three is no, and the reason is worth understanding, because it says something about how we judge costs.Here is what the fee does. Move Rs 1 lakh into a mutual fund by UPI and the charge is Rs 24. The fund house pays it. Not you. SIPs on UPI AutoPay pay nothing. The fee reaches you only if fund houses push it into the expense ratio instead of absorbing it. Capitalmind ran that number. Assume a quarter of a fund’s money arrives through UPI. Your lakh then pays about two rupees more a year.Two rupees.Now look at what you already pay and never notice. The typical flexi-cap fund charges 2.07 per cent a year on its regular plan. On the same lakh, that is Rs 2,065. Every year. Taken daily, in slices too small to see on any statement. An aggressive hybrid fund takes Rs 2,210. Nobody forwards a WhatsApp message about that.This is the point. We judge a cost by how loudly it arrives, not by what it takes. The expense ratio never announces itself. This fee did, with a date and a headline. So it feels like the bigger one. It is not. It is not even close.And you can do something about the big one this afternoon. The direct plan of that same flexi-cap fund charges 0.86 per cent. Same fund, same manager, same portfolio. Rs 860 instead of Rs 2,065. Switching saves you Rs 1,205 a year on every lakh, which is about six hundred times the fee everyone is worried about.One honest caveat. Index funds have the least room to absorb anything. UTI Nifty 50 Index, direct plan, charges 0.18 per cent a year. Some index funds charge as little as 0.05. Against a cost that small, two hundredths of a per cent is a real fraction of the fund’s entire charge. If you own index funds, check the expense ratio the next time it’s published. If it moves, you will know why.Brokers have a real complaint. It just is not yours. Send Rs 5 lakh to your broker as margin for a trade that earns them Rs 20, and they pay Rs 100 on the transfer. Let the brokers fight that one.Don’t go back to net banking either. Those transfers have cost Rs 3 to Rs 14 each for years. Somebody has always paid for the pipes. Until now, the government paid about Rs 20,000 crore a year.So: don’t stop a SIP. Don’t time a lump sum around the 15th. And if you hold a regular plan, look up its direct version today. The money you save there is six hundred times the money in the news.(Dhirendra Kumar is Founder and CEO of Value Research)
