- Saturday, April 12, 2025
Those relying on UPI for everyday payments, including local shopping, bill payments, and money transfers were not able to carry out their transactions
By: India Weekly
DIGITAL payments across the country came to a standstill on Saturday (12) after an outage in the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) services, a real-time payment system used for sending and receiving money between bank accounts using a mobile app.
This disruption in UPI has paralysed digital transaction capabilities on payment platforms such as Paytm, PhonePe, and Google Pay.
Those relying on UPI for everyday payments, including local shopping, bill payments, and money transfers were not able to carry out their transactions.
The outage was widely reported on social media and tracked by monitoring websites like Downdetector.
Some complained they were stuck at petrol pumps, grocery stores as their payments have been declined.
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems, said in a post on X: “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.”
The outage affected users across different banks and platforms, pointing towards a widespread disruption.
The affected banks include HDFC Bank, State Bank of India, and Kotak Mahindra Bank, among others.
This is the third major disruption reported within a month – the earlier two disruptions happened on March 26 and April 2.
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.
The UPI transaction volumes have steadily risen over the years.
As per the Reserve Bank of India data, UPI accounted for 83 per cent of total payment volumes by the end of 2024, up from 34 per cent at the end of 2019.
During the same period, the share of other payment modes such as RTGS, NEFT, IMPS, credit cards and debit cards dropped from 66 per cent to 17 per cent.
The Reserve Bank on Wednesday (9) permitted NPCI to upwardly revise transaction limits in UPI for person-to-merchant payments.
At present, the transaction amount for UPI, covering both Person to Person (P2P) and Person to Merchant payments (P2M), is capped at ₹100,000.
“To enable the ecosystem to respond efficiently to new use cases, it is proposed that NPCI, in consultation with banks and other stakeholders of the UPI ecosystem, may announce and revise such limits based on evolving user needs,” RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra said.
Appropriate safeguards will be put in place to mitigate risks associated with higher limits, he added.
