UPI Outage Disrupts Digital Payments On SBI, Google Pay, Paytm And Other Users

There was a widespread outage of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) services on Monday, leading to nationwide transaction failures affecting millions of SBI, Google Pay, and Paytm users across India. The outage, which led to disruption in fund transfers, payments, and app operations, peaked in users' complaints during the afternoon and evening. Subsequently, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), operating UPI, acknowledged that the outage was a result of random technical issues but had ensured the restoration of the system.

The outage was especially distressing, with most users being unable to make digital payments. Downdetector, a website that monitors service outages, reported that approximately 64 per cent of the reports were for inability to transfer funds, 28 per cent reported payment failure, and 8 per cent experienced app performance issues.

State Bank of India, India's largest government-owned bank and a market leader in the UPI network, accounted for most of the reported disruption. Among its users, 57 per cent were unable to transfer funds, 34 per cent encountered problems with mobile banking, and 9 per cent encountered problems with syncing the account balance. 

UPI failures first began to appear during the morning and picked up pace during the day. Complaints during peak hours were between 1:00 PM and 5:00 PM, although SBI customers started facing issues much earlier, with some registering complaints of services being unavailable as early as 10:00 PM the previous night.

When transactions failed and refunds were withheld, frustrated users vented their anger on social media. The majority of them shared screenshots of error messages such as "UPI down in India," wondering why banks, payment apps, and NPCI were not providing them with instant communication regarding the matter. There was none of that official explanation provided by the authorities, and people were left wondering whether it was due to server overload, maintenance, or even the fear of a cybersecurity problem.

The blackout also indicated the huge reliance of India's digital payment ecosystem on UPI. UPI has become the backbone of financial transactions for individuals and businesses in the last few years, and any disruption in its services has turned into a point of concern. The episode reflected the need to maintain robust backup systems and good communication channels so that such occurrences could be dealt with effectively.

While initial accounts suggested a technical glitch, an official communication made it unequivocally clear as to whether this was a case of a localised or part of a system meltdown. With the increasing dependency on online transactions, the experts hold the view that the service providers and the regulators must invest in infrastructure upgradation so that massive failures such as these can be prevented in the future.

In response to this spate of complaints, NPCI again conceded that some technical issues had partly led to a slowdown in UPI services, but assured that the problem was already fixed and the system stabilised. Along with it, NPCI also apologised for the inconvenience brought to crores of users in the country.

Until normalcy in services became a routine, customers were recommended to employ various modes of payment such as debit cards, credit cards, and net banking to make their transactions. Since UPI was utilised so extensively in regular financial transactions, such incidents are remembered for the usefulness of having stand-by modes of payments.

This is not the first time that UPI services have gone down. On March 26, a similar digital transactions outage had occurred in the country, and over 3,000 complaints had been reported on Downdetector during the outage. While NPCI was able to resume services on both occasions, regular occurrences of such breakdowns are a cause of concern about the stability of India's rapidly expanding digital payments ecosystem.