A major technical snag disrupted UPI (Unified Payments Interface) services across India on Saturday morning, marking the third major outage in just 30 days.
Developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), UPI is an instant payment platform widely used across the country. On Saturday, users on major apps like Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm were unable to complete transactions, causing significant inconvenience to individuals and businesses alike.
According to outage tracking platform DownDetector, 2,147 complaints were recorded by 12:56 PM, with nearly 80% of users facing issues during payment processing. Earlier in the morning, 1,168 complaints had already been filed, indicating widespread user dissatisfaction.
The disruption affected multiple financial institutions, including major banks such as HDFC Bank, State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, and Kotak Mahindra Bank.
Coinciding with the outage, the NPCI had earlier in the week announced a new policy update concerning international UPI payments. Effective April 8, the use of QR codes for transactions outside India has been restricted to enhance payer identification. Domestic QR code payments remain unaffected.
This follows a similar incident on March 26, when UPI services experienced a widespread outage, disrupting digital payments for many users.
Addressing the issue back then, NPCI stated on X (formerly Twitter): “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.”
