On Monday evening, May 12, India faced a major technical issue in the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system, causing massive payment failures across top digital payment apps like Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm. This marks the third major outage in just one month, raising concerns among users and businesses.
Thousands of users took to social media and platforms like DownDetector to report that their UPI payments were failing. Apps like Paytm showed error messages such as:
"There is a technical issue with the UPI app. Please try again later."
Google Pay and PhonePe users also experienced similar transaction errors and delays.
Interestingly, the UPI network has seen record-breaking growth, despite periodic glitches.
In March 2024, India recorded 18.3 billion UPI transactions,
Valued at a whopping ₹24.77 lakh crore, up 12.8% from February.
Clearly, UPI is the backbone of India’s digital payments infrastructure.
PhonePe handled 864.7 crore transactions, accounting for 47.25% of the total UPI volume.
Google Pay was second with 36.04% share in transaction volume and 34.98% in transaction value.
To further encourage digital payments, the Indian government has approved a ₹1,500 crore incentive scheme, focusing on:
Promoting BHIM-UPI among small vendors
Offering cashback on micro-transactions under ₹200
Expanding reach in rural and semi-urban areas
UPI has revolutionized digital payments in India, but the recurring outages raise important questions about system resilience. As usage continues to surge, it is crucial for stakeholders to ensure reliability and seamless service across platforms.
