As Unified Payments Interface (UPI) network faced two bank-wide outages in March. While one outage was attributed to year-end financial strain on banking systems, the other, on March 26, was caused by a “hardware failure” at NPCI’s end.

“In the last 3-4 years we have not had much downtime. Last week, we had a small outage and that was possibly owing to a hardware failure. We are working with the OEM concerned in this case to ascertain the root cause for the failure,” NPCI’s Chief Risk Officer, Viswanath Krishnamurthy, told businessline.

He also noted that the organisation had robust systems in place to handle the growing volume of UPI transactions. “In March, we did 18 billion transactions, but we have the capacity to go for even 1 billion a day, i.e. 30 billion a month. Plans are also on to further increase this capability.”

“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 organisation said in a post on X on March 26.

Krishnamurthy, who oversees functioning of Enterprise Risk Management, Fraud Risk Management, Information Security, and other related compliance, said NPCI has a robust cybersecurity team and also works with top external experts to ensure cyber resilience and avoid system downtimes. “Resiliency is a key priority and we have put in various efforts to ensure resilient systems. We have multiple data centres. We also work with CERT-IN and other professional bodies to get necessary alerts on time,” he said.

He also clarified that not all downtimes can be categorised as glitches at NPCI’s end and could also be due to banking systems.

UPI saw a 13.6 per cent increase in transaction volume in March, reaching 18.3 billion transactions, compared to 16.11 billion in February. March recorded a record ₹24.77 lakh crore worth of UPI-based transactions, a 13 per cent increase from ₹21.96 lakh crore in February. The March 26 bank-wide outage of UPI was one of the largest faced since 2020 when a banking restriction on Yes Bank by RBI hindered UPI payments.