Hundreds of users across the country could not complete their financial transactions on Sunday after the Unified Payments Interface faced outage for over 2 hours. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which manages the payment platform, said the services were affected due to a technical glitch without giving any further details. The platform was restored by 5 PM.
“Regret the inconvenience to #UPI users due to intermittent technical glitch. #UPI is operational now, and we are monitoring system closely,” NPCI said in a tweet.
The glitch affected all banking users and also payment platforms including Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm. A number of users took to Twitter to complain. “I was struck in UPI payment with no option of cash and ATM card in my hand. I need to drive back home to pay vegetable vendor #UpiDown,” tweeted Hyderabad-based David Paul (@sdavidyash).
“This is why I keep on saying #NPCIeither should privatize or else shift to a better tech platform or a private cloud, this is not how a platform can behave, even Paytm saying issues at NPCI end so it has paused UPI, very very shameful this is,” said Akshay Shah - Founder CEO, iWeb
This comes even as UPI has gained huge traction among users of digital payment platforms. Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has been at the forefront of India’s digital payments revolution, making faster inroads into retail payments than any other online mode. The mobility restrictions brought on by Covid only heightened its appeal with monthly transactions value clocked by UPI vaulting from ₹1.8-lakh crore in November 2019 to ₹7.6-lakh crore by November 2021.