UPI Hit by Another Outage, Thousands of Users Report Payment Issues

India’s most widely used digital payment system, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), suffered yet another significant outage on Saturday, leaving thousands of users unable to complete payments and fund transfers. The disruption triggered widespread concern across social media platforms and disrupted daily transactions for individuals and businesses alike.

According to Downdetector, complaints related to UPI services surged to over 2,000 by noon, with payment failures and fund transfer issues being the most commonly reported problems. This marks the third major disruption in less than two weeks, raising fresh concerns over the robustness and scalability of the UPI infrastructure.

The latest incident follows two earlier outages—one on March 26 and another on April 2. On March 26, users across the country faced widespread transaction failures due to what the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) termed an “intermittent technical issue.” NPCI, which operates the UPI network, later confirmed that services had been restored. On April 2, Downdetector again reported hundreds of complaints, with approximately 50% related to fund transfers and 44% linked to payment failures.

Saturday’s outage affected major UPI platforms including Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm, along with several banking applications. Downdetector also recorded outage reports associated with State Bank of India (SBI) and Google Pay.

The recurring disruptions come at a time when UPI continues to break monthly transaction records. However, industry reports suggest that the blistering pace of growth is starting to plateau as UPI reaches deeper market penetration. As per the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), UPI accounted for 83% of the country’s total payment volumes by the end of 2024, a substantial increase from 34% in 2019. During the same period, the share of other payment modes—including RTGS, NEFT, IMPS, credit cards, and debit cards—declined from 66% to just 17%.

Despite its dominance in the payments landscape, the recent string of outages has left many users stranded at merchant counters, unable to complete transactions—a critical reminder of the need to strengthen the resilience and reliability of the nation’s digital payment backbone.

Authorities and banks are yet to issue an official statement regarding the latest incident.