MDR Effective-Rate Calculator: Per-Network Leakage Audit
Enter your monthly GMV split by network and the total fees billed by the gateway. The calculator computes the effective MDR you actually pay, compares it to the expected per-network MDR from the RBI and NPCI rate matrix, and flags the eight named leakage patterns — zero-MDR overcharges, premium-card misrouting, Amex and Diners inside blended rates, refund-MDR retention, and GST mismatches.
Your monthly settlement profile
All amounts in rupees. The calculator recomputes live as you type.
Monthly volume by network
Fees billed
Leave a row at 0 if you do not transact on that network. The expected per-network MDR baselines are taken from the RBI 2017 debit-card circular, the NPCI zero-MDR mandate, and the published gateway rate cards as of June 2026.
Per-network expected fee breakdown
| Network | Volume | Expected MDR | Expected fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| UPI bank account (P2M) | ₹0 | 0.00% | ₹0 |
| RuPay credit on UPI | ₹0 | 2.00% | ₹0 |
| PPI / wallet on UPI | ₹0 | 1.10% | ₹0 |
| RuPay debit | ₹0 | 0.00% | ₹0 |
| Visa/Mastercard debit | ₹0 | 0.90% | ₹0 |
| Visa/Mastercard credit (consumer) | ₹0 | 1.65% | ₹0 |
| Visa/Mastercard credit (commercial) | ₹0 | 2.75% | ₹0 |
| American Express | ₹0 | 3.10% | ₹0 |
| Diners Club / Discover | ₹0 | 3.10% | ₹0 |
| International cards | ₹0 | 3.10% | ₹0 |
| Net banking / EMI / prepaid / other | ₹0 | 1.80% | ₹0 |
| Expected total fee | ₹0 | 0.00% | ₹0 |
Leakage flags
Each flag is a deterministic check against the volumes and fees you entered. Green means clear; amber means a soft warning; red means a likely leakage pattern.
What "effective rate" actually means in Indian merchant settlements
The effective rate of a payment processing relationship is total fees billed divided by total GMV processed in a settled period. It is not the headline rate on the gateway pricing page; it is not the contracted blended rate in the merchant agreement; it is what you have actually paid after the per-network MDR has been applied to each transaction, after refund-MDR retention, after subscription add-ons, after international card surcharges, and after any forex layer on cross-border volume. For a finance team, the effective rate is the only number that can be reconciled against the bank statement and the cash flow. The headline 2 percent quoted by Razorpay or PayU, or 1.95 percent quoted by Cashfree, is a planning figure for sub-Rs 5-lakh-monthly merchants. For an enterprise processing crores per month with a negotiated rate card, the effective rate should land within 0.15 percentage points of the contracted rate; persistent variance beyond that band is the operational definition of leakage worth a per-network audit.
The eight named leakage patterns concentrate in places the blended rate cannot see. The first is the simplest: any non-zero network MDR component on a transaction routed through bank-account UPI or RuPay debit is leakage by definition, because the network MDR on those rails has been mandated at zero since 1 January 2020 under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act Section 10A and Income-tax Act Section 269SU. A legitimate platform fee on these instruments is permissible, but it must be contracted separately and shown as a non-MDR line. The second is premium and rewards cards billed at the premium 3 percent slab when the consumer card portfolio was supposed to sit at 1.4 to 1.9 percent. The third is domestic BINs charged at the international card rate of 2.69 to 3.5 percent plus forex, which happens when a card issuer is misclassified at the acquirer. The fourth is commercial and corporate cards billed at consumer rates and vice versa; both directions hide in a blended settlement and need a BIN to card-product mapping to surface. The fifth is Amex and Diners volume buried inside a 2 percent blended quote that does not separately recover the 2.95 to 3.5 percent these networks actually cost; the gateway is either cross-subsidising or reclassifying through a hidden premium line. The sixth is flat-rate pricing concealing per-network cost differences for a method mix that has shifted; a merchant moving from card-heavy to UPI-heavy on a flat 2 percent contract overpays relative to the true mix-weighted cost. The seventh is MDR retained on refunds and chargebacks at a rate higher than the contract permits, which compounds for subscription businesses with cancellations. The eighth is subscription add-ons such as Razorpay's 0.99 percent recurring fee and eNACH mandate-rejection fees stacking on base MDR without a contract basis.
TransactIG operationalises this audit at production scale across millions of transactions per month. The platform ingests the merchant's settlement files from every payment aggregator (Razorpay, PayU, Cashfree, PhonePe PG, BillDesk, Pine Labs, Paytm), parses each row to its underlying network and instrument using a BIN to card-product mapping maintained against the acquirer's interchange schedule, and reconciles the per-network fee actually charged against the contracted rate card for that merchant. Variance crossings, refund-MDR retention, GST line mismatches against the 18 percent expected, and the eight leakage patterns are surfaced into a structured exception register with the gateway contact and contract clause pre-populated for follow-up. The 51 percent baseline match rate moves to 88 percent on live customer data after configuration, and the variance trend over a six-month window becomes a defensible negotiation lever in the next contract review. ISO 27001:2022 certified, AWS Mumbai, implementation 2 to 4 weeks.
The audit threshold guidance from the research is direct: trigger a per-network sample audit when the effective rate exceeds the contracted rate by more than 0.15 percentage points across a settled month. At Rs 1 crore monthly GMV, 0.15 percentage points is approximately Rs 15,000 per month or Rs 1.8 lakh per year of leakage, which is large enough to fund the analyst time required to run a per-transaction sample of 100 to 200 transactions per network. Hold the audit for two consecutive months to confirm structural leakage versus a one-month settlement quirk, and re-baseline whenever the gateway changes its rate card, promotional pricing window lapses (Cashfree's 1.6 percent flat offer is locked for 12 months and requires UPI at 40 percent or more of monthly GTV; PhonePe's "Free" promo is time-bound), or the merchant's method mix moves by more than 10 percentage points on any single network.
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Discuss a per-network audit
If your variance is above 0.15 percentage points for two months, talk to us.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between 'gateway platform fee' and 'network MDR'? +
Network MDR (Merchant Discount Rate) is the regulated or contracted cost of the underlying card or UPI instrument — what flows to the issuer, network, and acquirer. It is zero on bank-account UPI P2M and RuPay debit (mandated by the Payment & Settlement Systems Act Section 10A and Income-tax Act Section 269SU since 1 January 2020), capped at 0.40% or 0.90% on Visa and Mastercard debit by RBI circular DPSS.CO.PD No.1633/02.14.003/2017-18, and uncapped on credit cards. Gateway platform fee is what the payment aggregator (Razorpay, PayU, Cashfree, PhonePe PG) bills the merchant on top — for handling, settlement, fraud screening, reporting, and the aggregator's own margin. A merchant accepting bank-account UPI legitimately pays a gateway platform fee even though the network MDR is zero. Confusion between the two is the single largest source of fee misclassification in Indian merchant settlements: a non-zero charge on a UPI line is leakage if it is being billed as 'MDR', but legitimate if it is a separately contracted platform fee.
Why is UPI showing zero MDR — is that right? +
Yes, for bank-account UPI P2M and RuPay debit P2M, the network MDR is zero. This is current law as of June 2026 and is sustained by a central government incentive scheme allocated Rs 2,000 crore in FY27 (Budget 2026-27). Businesses with annual turnover above Rs 50 crore are mandated under Section 269SU of the Income-tax Act to offer these zero-MDR modes, with a Rs 5,000 per day penalty under Section 271DB for non-compliance. Three important exceptions DO carry MDR even when the user transacts through the UPI rail: RuPay credit card on UPI (approximately 2% on transactions above Rs 2,000), wallet or PPI on UPI (approximately 1.1% on transactions above Rs 2,000), and credit-line on UPI. These are 'UPI' from the consumer experience but instrument-wise carry network MDR. Many gateway settlement files group them all under a single 'UPI' label, which is a structural source of disguised leakage. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance recommended a tiered UPI P2M MDR in March 2026 and the Payments Council of India has proposed 0.30% above Rs 20 lakh turnover, but no binding government or RBI decision exists as of June 2026.
How do I know my contracted rate? +
Your contracted rate is the per-network and per-instrument schedule attached to your merchant agreement with the payment aggregator, NOT the headline rate on the gateway's public pricing page. Published rates (typically 2.0% at Razorpay and PayU, 1.95% at Cashfree, 1.95% with a 'Free' promo at PhonePe PG, plus 18% GST) are designed for sub-Rs 5-lakh-monthly merchants. Enterprise merchants processing Rs 1 crore or more per month commonly negotiate cards down to 1.4 to 1.6%, and the contracted rate often has separate slabs for each network (Visa or Mastercard consumer, commercial, Amex, Diners, International), each instrument (debit, credit, EMI, prepaid), and any subscription or recurring add-ons. If you cannot locate your contracted schedule, ask your account manager for the 'pricing annexure' or the 'rate card'. Reconciling against the published rate when you have negotiated terms will under-report leakage; reconciling against an outdated schedule when terms have changed will over-report.
What if Amex/Diners volume is included in a blended rate? +
Amex and Diners are billed at the premium 3% slab (2.95 to 3.5%) across every aggregator we tracked. If your contract quotes a single blended rate of approximately 2% and your transaction mix includes Amex or Diners, one of two things is happening. Either the gateway is reclassifying the Amex and Diners volume internally and recovering through the 'premium' line that appears separately on the settlement file — in which case the effective rate on those networks should be the contracted premium slab, not the blended headline. Or the gateway is honouring the blended rate at a loss on Amex and Diners and recovering elsewhere, which is unstable and usually corrects within a quarter through a contract revision. Use this calculator to compute the EFFECTIVE rate per network from the volumes you have actually transacted: if Amex plus Diners exceeds 2% of GMV but the total effective rate is below 2%, the gateway is cross-subsidising and the contract should be re-read to confirm where the recovery sits. If Amex plus Diners is above 2% of GMV and the effective rate is above 2%, the leakage is real and the contract probably has a hidden 'premium card' carve-out.
When should I trigger a per-network audit? +
Trigger a full per-network audit when your effective rate (total fees billed divided by GMV) exceeds your contracted blended rate by more than 0.15 percentage points across a settled month. At Rs 1 crore monthly GMV, 0.15 percentage points is approximately Rs 15,000 per month or Rs 1.8 lakh per year of fee leakage — large enough to fund an analyst's time on the reconciliation. Other audit triggers from the research: any non-zero network-MDR component on bank-account UPI or RuPay debit (the mandate is zero), international card volume billed without a separate forex conversion line, commercial card volume above 10% of card GMV without a separate corporate-card slab in the contract, and MDR retained on refunds or chargebacks at a rate higher than the contractual refund-MDR clause permits. These should be checked monthly; if the gap holds for two consecutive months a per-transaction sample audit of 100 to 200 transactions per network is the standard next step.
Move from one-month calculator to monthly per-network audit
TransactIG reconciles Razorpay, PayU, Cashfree, PhonePe PG, BillDesk, Pine Labs, and Paytm settlement files against your contracted rate card and surfaces the eight leakage patterns continuously. ISO 27001:2022, AWS Mumbai, implementation 2 to 4 weeks.