A major technical problem has caused a disruption in UPI services throughout India on Saturday morning, preventing users from making digital transactions. This unexpected outage affected UPI, which is a crucial service that allows people and businesses to send and receive money easily. Many users were unable to complete payments, impacting daily activities for individuals and businesses alike. According to reports from DownDetector, there were around 1,168 complaints about these UPI issues by noon. Among those, Google Pay users reported 96 problems, while Paytm users noted 23 issues. The NPCI acknowledged that UPI was currently experiencing intermittent technical issues, which were causing partial declines in UPI transactions. They mentioned that they were working to resolve the issue and would provide updates. Additionally, they expressed regret for the inconvenience caused.
The recent outage highlights India's significant reliance on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for everyday transactions and illustrates how a disruption can affect digital payment processes across the country. The cause of the failure has not yet been determined, leaving open the possibilities of server overloads, scheduled maintenance, or potential cybersecurity issues.
The outage has impacted numerous financial institutions, notably including major banks such as HDFC Bank, State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, and Kotak Mahindra Bank, among others.
The last significant outage occurred on March 26, when users of various UPI apps were unable to access the service for about 2 to 3 hours. The NPCI attributed that problem to some technical difficulties that temporarily affected the system. As a result, both everyday users and merchants experienced interruptions, disrupting the smooth transactions that UPI usually provides.
Meanwhile, on April 8, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) issued a notice stating that for international transactions made using the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the feature that allows users to share and pay using a QR code will no longer be allowed. This change is meant to help ensure that the app used for making payments can correctly identify the payer. However, there will be no changes to the limits for other types of UPI transactions, including those using QR codes for payments within India.
