UPI payments disrupted again; users face third outage in a month

India’s digital payment backbone, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), faced yet another nationwide disruption on Saturday (April 12) morning, causing widespread inconvenience.

Popular UPI apps like Paytm, PhonePe, and Google Pay were affected, leaving users unable to complete transactions—both personal and business—for hours.

This marks the third major outage in less than a month, exposing cracks in the system's resilience and raising red flags over India's growing dependence on digital payments.

Also Read: UPI services down across country; what NPCI says

Complaints soar

According to DownDetector, a platform that tracks online service issues, 1,168 complaints were reported by noon. Google Pay accounted for 96 issues, while Paytm saw 23.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) acknowledged the problem via a post on X (formerly Twitter), citing “intermittent technical issues” causing partial transaction declines.

In a statement on X (formerly Twitter), the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) acknowledged the issue: "We are currently facing intermittent technical issues, leading to partial UPI transaction declines. We regret the inconvenience caused."

While engineers are working to resolve the issue, users were left without clarity on when normalcy would return.

Widespread impact

The ripple effects were felt across both individual and business users. Major banks including SBI, HDFC, and Kotak Mahindra also faced service slowdowns, adding to user woes.

Many reported failed transactions at essential services like local shops, bill counters, and fuel stations.

For small businesses relying entirely on digital payments, this outage meant delays in sales, dissatisfied customers, and lost revenue.

Users also took to social media, flooding platforms with memes and complaints under hashtags like #UPIDown and #GPay.

A recurring issue

This isn’t an isolated incident. Similar outages occurred on March 26 and April 2, each time leaving users frustrated. The March 26 event logged over 3,000 user complaints, while April 2 saw more than 500 issues related to fund transfers.

Such frequent disruptions have raised alarms over the resilience of India’s digital payment infrastructure, especially with UPI reportedly accounting for over 65% of the country’s total digital transactions.

Despite reassurances, the frequency of these outages suggests deeper technical or infrastructural problems.

Watch here: UPI payments: How to send money instantly without internet

System under strain

The latest glitch coincides with NPCI’s recent policy update on international UPI transactions, restricting QR code usage for cross-border payments.

Although domestic transaction limits remain unchanged, the move points to a system undergoing rapid changes.

The recent UPI failures point to increasing server loads, lack of redundancy, and possibly inadequate scaling measures as key reasons behind repeated outages.

While recent changes to international UPI QR code usage have aimed at tightening security, the domestic infrastructure appears under pressure.

Need for reform

With UPI forming the core of India's digital finance ecosystem, repeated breakdowns jeopardise public trust.

The industry now faces an urgent need to strengthen infrastructure, ensure uptime, and maintain transparency to keep pace with rising user expectations and volume.

The current crisis serves as a wake-up call for digital payment providers and regulators alike to reinforce India's digital economy against future failures.