UPI Down: Major Disruption Hits Paytm, PhonePe, and Google Pay
A significant technical glitch on Saturday morning caused a widespread UPI down incident across India, disrupting services on leading digital payment platforms including Paytm, PhonePe, and Google Pay. This major outage impacted both personal and business transactions nationwide.
According to outage tracking service DownDetector, over 1,168 user complaints were recorded by noon. Google Pay faced 96 reports, while Paytm had 23. The disruption also affected core banking systems of financial giants such as HDFC Bank, State Bank of India, and Kotak Mahindra Bank.
NPCI Acknowledges UPI Down Incident
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) addressed the issue via X (formerly Twitter), stating:
“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.”
This marks another recent disruption, following the March 26 outage that left users unable to access UPI services for nearly three hours.
Recurring UPI Disruptions Raise Concerns
With India’s growing reliance on digital payments, especially through UPI, such service interruptions can cause significant setbacks. Both individual users and businesses experience delays, losses, and operational issues when these platforms are down. So far, NPCI has not disclosed the root cause of this recent disruption, leaving users seeking clarity and stability.
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Recent NPCI Update on International Transactions
Interestingly, this outage comes just days after NPCI’s April 8 announcement restricting QR code use for international UPI transactions. The update aims to improve payer verification during cross-border transactions but does not impact domestic transaction limits.
Why Downtime Matters
As the backbone of India’s digital financial ecosystem, UPI processes millions of transactions daily. Outages like this one expose vulnerabilities such as server overloads, maintenance lapses, or potential cybersecurity threats. The lack of transparency surrounding the issues fuels concern among users and stakeholders.
Need for Strengthened Infrastructure
The simultaneous failure across competing platforms—Paytm, PhonePe, and Google Pay—highlights a sector-wide challenge. It underscores the need for collaborative efforts to strengthen UPI’s infrastructure, ensuring reliability and trust in India’s fintech ecosystem.