On Monday evening, India's UPI (Unified Payments Interface) system faced a major glitch, causing widespread disruption for users of popular payment apps such as Paytm, Google Pay, and PhonePe. The glitch affected the ability of many users to complete transactions, with complaints flooding social media and tracking platforms like Downdetector seeing a significant spike in outage reports. Users encountered error messages on Paytm, while similar issues were reported on Google Pay and PhonePe.
The disruption occurred during peak usage hours, affecting merchants and consumers who rely on UPI for their daily transactions. This marks the third such outage in less than a month, raising concerns about the reliability of the UPI system, especially as digital payments become an integral part of India’s economy.
Despite the widespread nature of the problem, there has been no official statement from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which manages UPI, regarding the cause of the issue.
This outage comes at a time when UPI transactions in India are breaking records. In March, UPI processed over 18.3 billion transactions, a rise from 16.11 billion in February, with the total value of these transactions reaching Rs 24.77 lakh crore. PhonePe was the dominant player in March, processing over 864 crore transactions, nearly half of all UPI traffic, with Google Pay close behind. Although Paytm has a smaller share, it remains a significant player, especially among small businesses and shopkeepers.
The timing of the outage is also noteworthy as it follows the government's announcement of a Rs 1,500 crore incentive aimed at encouraging small vendors to adopt UPI through the BHIM app. Given the increasing reliance on digital payments, repeated disruptions in the UPI service are likely to raise concerns about the long-term stability and scalability of the system.
