UPI down for several users across India, third outage in 30 days

A major technical glitch disrupted Unified Payments Interface (UPI) services across India on Saturday morning, marking the third significant outage in the past 30 days.

Users across leading digital payment apps, including Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm, were unable to complete transactions, causing widespread inconvenience to both individuals and businesses.

According to DownDetector, a website that monitors outages, 2,147 complaints were reported by 12.56 pm, with nearly 80% of users experiencing issues during payment attempts. Earlier in the day, 1,168 complaints had already been logged, highlighting the growing frustration among users.

Saturday’s disruption impacted a broad range of financial institutions, including major banks like HDFC Bank, State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, and Kotak Mahindra Bank.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, NPCI announced a key policy change for international UPI transactions. As of April 8, the use of QR codes for payments made outside India has been restricted to improve payer identification. However, QR-based payments within India remain unaffected.

UPI disruptions

On March 26, digital transactions were hit due to a widespread UPI outage, with a large number of users reporting problems in the instant payment interface.

"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 payment regulator said in a post on X.

UPI payments went down for a brief while again on April 2.

India leads in UPI transactions

Nearly one-third of all domestic digital payment transactions in 2024 were credit-driven, facilitated through credit cards or interest-bearing EMIs, according to a report.

According to a report by digital payments fintech Phi Commerce, UPI has become a transformational product in digital payments responsible for 65 per cent of total transactions.

While UPI dominates small and mid-value transactions, credit cards and EMIs (equated monthly instalments) are increasingly used for big-ticket purchases, with education, healthcare, and auto ancillary sectors seeing strong growth in digital credit adoption, the report said.

Festive shopping, school admissions, and seasonal trends drive spikes in credit usage, showing that consumers rely on short-term credit for high-spend periods, it said.

The report is based on analysed transaction data from over 20,000 merchants across the country.