UPI Outage Disrupts Digital Transactions Across India
March 26 – A widespread outage in India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) on Wednesday disrupted digital transactions, with users across the country reporting payment failures on the instant payment system.
The outage, which lasted for about an hour, led to a surge in complaints on Downdetector, a platform that tracks service disruptions based on user reports. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which operates UPI, confirmed the issue and said the system had since been stabilised.
“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 NPCI said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
UPI, developed and managed by NPCI under the regulation of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), is an instant payment system that enables money transfers between bank accounts. Built on the IMPS infrastructure, it allows transactions without user charges, making it a popular choice for digital payments, including small-value transactions at local businesses.
The platform also features an AutoPay option for recurring payments, streamlining bill and subscription payments. The outage on Wednesday raised concerns over the reliability of the system, which has become integral to India’s digital economy. NPCI did not disclose the specific cause of the disruption, but the swift resolution helped restore normalcy to transactions across banking and fintech platforms.
