NEW DELHI: The widely used Unified Payments Interface (UPI) services experienced a major disruption across India on Saturday, marking the third major outage in a month. Users are facing widespread issues on digital payment platforms like Paytm, Google Pay and PhonePe. UPI services were hit by a major disruption across the country with tracking platform DownDetector reporting more than 2,100 complaints later in the day as around 80 per cent of users have informed about failed transactions. Social media is flooded with screenshots of failed payment notification errors. People are especially facing problems while trying QR code-based transactions. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which manages UPI services, confirmed the technical issue and has posted a statement on its official account on X. The post said: “NPCI is currently facing internet technical issues, resulting in partial UPI transactions declines. We are working to resolve the issue and will keep you updated. We regret the inconvenience caused.”
As the outage is currently trending on social media, many users vented their frustration and also shared memes about it under the hashtag #UPIDown. One user commented, ‘’#UPI Down again. So strange!! This is becoming too frequent nowadays. First #UPI goes down, then banks declare their own ‘downtime’. UPI users faced transaction failures as the popular payment system was down due to a technical glitch. This is the third time in less than a fortnight that UPI witnessed outages impacting transactions. In the recent past, UPI outages was reported on March 26 and April 2. The UPI is an instant payment system developed and managed by the NPCI, an RBI-regulated entity. NPCI acknowledged that users are facing partial transaction decline and it is working to resolve the issue. UPI is built over the IMPS infrastructure and allows you to instantly transfer money between two bank accounts. The payment interface provides a transfer facility without any user charge. Users can transfer any amount of money at any time without incurring additional fees from NPCI. It is also widely used for small payments at local shops, as there is no minimum transaction limit. Additionally, UPI offers a convenient AutoPay feature, which allows users to set up recurring payments for bills and subscriptions, making transactions seamless and hassle-free. It is to be noted that transactions through UPI touched a record high of Rs 24.77 lakh crore in March, recording a growth of 12.7 per cent over the preceding month. The UPI transaction value was Rs 21.96 lakh crore in February.