UPI services crash 2nd time in a week; NPCI attributes outage to bank system fluctuations

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has stated that the country-wide Unified Payments Interface (UPI) outage occurred due to "fluctuations in the success rates of some banks," which increased the latency of the widely used payments network.

In yet another instance of a massive outage, UPI users are facing disruptions, with the users of big players like Paytm, PhoanePe and Google Pay facing issues in sending or receiving money.

Reacting to the development, the NPCI said: "There were some intermittent declines in UPI due to fluctuations in the success rates of some banks. These fluctuations increased the latency in the UPI network. NPCI has been working closely with them, and UPI has been stable."

The UPI outage peaked around 7:30 PM, with 52% of users facing difficulties in transferring money and around 45% encountering issues while making UPI payments. About 3% reported problems even while using the app itself, according to data from Downdetector.

UPI, an instant real-time payment system developed by NPCI, facilitates inter-bank peer-to-peer and person-to-merchant transactions. One of the most widely used payment systems, UPI recorded 18.30 billion transactions in March alone, marking a 36% year-on-year growth, as per NPCI data.

Meanwhile, some users took to social media to express their frustration, with many suggesting a return to cash as UPI is becoming unreliable.

One user (@nallaganesh) posted on X: "Oh! India can ill afford these #UPI downtimes—every single downtime will push the 5 trillion-dollar dream by a few years at least!!!"

Another asked: "Why are #GPay, #PhonePe, #UPI down? #UPIDown incidents are increasing... Is there a cyber attack?"

A user (Likhit Senthilkumar) tweeted: "#UPIDown—my and my friends' UPI are down. I was stuck in a critical position."

Just last week, Shark Tank India judge Anupam Mittal, founder of Shaadi.com, criticized NPCI over the UPI outage. He posted on X: "Digital payments via UPI continue to struggle after 24 hrs, while media reports claim it was down only for an hour. Increasingly, problem-solving is becoming problem-spinning."