NEW DELHI: Mastercard chief financial officer (CFO) Sachin Mehra has said that the unified payments interface (UPI) is “fantastic at many levels” but remains an “incredibly painful experience” for ecosystem participants.

Speaking at the recent UBS conference, Mehra said that “it is an incredibly painful experience for ecosystem participants who all end up losing money as part of that proposition,” reports TechCrunch.

This is not the first time Mastercard has expressed reservations about UPI.

“The banks which actually enable those payments tend to lose money on those transactions. So it’s a proposition which we are asking the question is this long-term sustainable or not. And who knows? We’ll see where it goes. But in the meantime, debit continues to flourish in that market, as does credit,” Mehra said in May.

Meanwhile, after making history by reaching the 10-billion mark for the first time in August, UPI recorded 10.56 billion transactions in September.