New Delhi: In a stunning display of recurring issues, India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) services faced yet another significant disruption on Saturday, marking the third such outage in just over a month. The latest hiccup in the digital payment system left millions of users scrambling as platforms like Google Pay, Paytm, and other popular apps failed to process transactions smoothly. The widespread impact was felt across the country, affecting both personal and business transactions.
This most recent outage occurred on a Saturday morning, during a time when digital transactions are crucial for daily activities. It highlighted the vulnerability of India’s heavily relied-upon UPI infrastructure, which has increasingly become the backbone of financial transactions. The disruption is part of a series of technical issues plaguing UPI services in recent weeks, raising concerns about the system’s reliability and efficiency.
DownDetector, a platform that tracks service disruptions, reported an astonishing number of complaints—approximately 1,168 by the afternoon. Users of Google Pay experienced 96 issues, while Paytm users reported 23. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), responsible for the UPI network, acknowledged the problem, citing intermittent technical issues leading to partial transaction declines. NPCI assured users that they are working to resolve the issue and apologized for the inconvenience caused.
Preceding this event were other significant outages. On April 2nd, UPI services were disrupted, with 514 complaints logged on DownDetector. The NPCI attributed this to fluctuations in bank success rates, which caused increased latency in the UPI network. In response, NPCI collaborated with banks to stabilize the system.
Another major outage occurred on March 26th, affecting over 3,000 users. For 2-3 hours, users of popular UPI apps like Google Pay and Paytm were unable to access the service, resulting in a significant disruption to daily transactions. These recurring outages underscore the need for enhanced system resilience and better communication with users, especially as UPI remains a critical component of India’s digital economy.
