UPI Services In India Face Second Major Outage In A Week, Users Furious

Unified Payments Interface (UPI) services experienced a widespread outage across major applications on Wednesday, marking the second major disruption within a week.

According to DownDetector, 449 complaints had been recorded by 8 pm, with approximately 53 per cent of users reporting difficulties in transferring funds via the apps.

Photo Credit: https://x.com/GooglePayIndia

"Looks like UPI is down again!!" a user wrote on social media platform X.

Another user expressed frustration, posting, "What's going on with UPI these days? It keeps failing every other day. At this rate, it'll have me washing dishes in a hotel someday. The government should take proper steps to ensure that UPI works smoothly."

UPI services disrupted on March 26

On March 26, digital transactions were majorly impacted due to a widespread UPI outage, with a large number of users experiencing issues with the instant payment system.

"NPCI had faced intermittent technical issues owing to which UPI had partial decline. The same has been addressed now and the system has stabilised. Regret the inconvenience," the payment regulator stated in a post on X.

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is an instant payment system developed and managed by the NPCI, an entity regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

UPI transaction volumes surged by 42 per cent year-on-year (YoY), reaching 93.23 billion in the second half of 2024, according to a report by Worldline, quoted by PTI.

The report highlighted that three platforms-PhonePe, Google Pay, and Paytm-dominate the UPI market in terms of both transaction volume and value.

"When comparing the volume of UPI transactions in 2H (July-December) 2024 to 2H 2023, it increased by 42 per cent from 65.77 billion to 93.23 billion. During the same timeframe, the value of transactions increased by 31 per cent from ₹99.68 trillion to ₹130.19 trillion," the report noted.

Commenting on the rapid expansion of digital payments, Ramesh Narasimhan, Chief Executive Officer of Worldline India, stated, "India's digital payments ecosystem is evolving at an unprecedented pace, driven by UPI's widespread adoption, the expansion of POS infrastructure, and the growing preference for mobile transactions. The rapid rise of SoftPOS technology is redefining how businesses accept payments, making digital transactions more accessible than ever."