BENGALURU: The fintech industry hopes the government will announce fresh measures in the Budget to help the sector maintain its growth momentum in the next financial year, senior executives said.Although the government had announced several plans related to digital payments and the broader financial technology sector last year many are yet to materialise, they told ET.In a statement on Wednesday, the Payments Council of India, the lobby group of digital payment companies said: “The government should consider providing tax relief to merchants accepting digital payments on overall incremental values, especially to those with annual turnover of Rs 20 lakh as proposed by the central bank.”The industry also wants incentives to help the merchant acquiring business entities manage the challenges around merchant discount rate, which is their major source of revenue. 62733541 “With Budget 2018, we hope that the government can provide some incentives to the acquirers so that these entities can continue to make investments in the business that are essential to provide the underlying support to the initiatives already taken,” said Deepak Chandnani, CEO, South Asia and Middle East at Worldline.Consumer-facing fintech startups are hoping for stronger support from the government in order to attract more people to invest through them. Increase of tax exemption bracket for savings and other investment products would bring more people into the formal economy and help expand the country’s GDP, executives said.Further, with the equity markets on a high, such exemptions would encourage people to invest actively, they said.”We have suggested to the finance ministry that there is a need to look into the amounts on which consumers can seek exemptions – like for savings balances interest above ?10,000 gets taxed,” said Adhil Shetty, founder of loan aggregating marketplace BankBazaar.