Unified Payments Interface services had a significant outage on Saturday, disconnecting users on popular platforms like Paytm, Google Pay, and PhonePe from being able to make transactions. The outage is the fourth within the last month, which has brought into question India’s most popular digital payment system’s reliability.
As per outage-tracking website DownDetector, users began complaining about UPI issues around 11:26 a.m., with grievances reaching a peak at 11:40 a.m. The platform logged more than 222 reports of unsuccessful transactions within minutes.
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which operates the UPI infrastructure, confirmed the technical difficulties and issued a statement via social media. The post said “NPCI is currently facing intermittent technical issues, leading to partial UPI transaction declines. We are working to resolve the issue and will keep you updated. We regret the inconvenience caused.”
Users complained on social media, many mentioning disrupted payments and embarrassing moments due to the system failure. “I was not carrying cash and this downtime placed me in an awkward situation while paying fare to an auto driver,” one user posted on X (formerly Twitter). Another user demanded greater reliability, saying, “We need a zero-downtime UPI infra. At least there should be prior intimation in case of planned outages.”
This latest incident is part of a series of recurring technical issues with the UPI network. On March 26, services were down for several hours due to similar problems. Once again, on March 31, there were payment delays, which NPCI had explained as bank-side processing delays during the rush of the financial year-end. There was a reported brief outage on April 2 due to UPI network latency.
Even with these interruptions, UPI remains the master of India’s digital payment scene. UPI transactions in January 2025 exceeded 16.99 billion, amounting to more than ₹23.48 lakh crore—a new record for the month, according to the Finance Ministry. The ministry again confirmed that UPI processes close to 80% of all retail digital payments in the country, highlighting its vital role in India’s fintech ecosystem.
