UPI down: Google Pay, PhonePe users unable to make payments
What's the story
The Unified Payments Interface (UPI), India's most popular digital payment system, is facing a major service disruption at the moment.
Thousands of users are reporting issues in completing payments and fund transfers.
Downdetector data shows over 1,000 complaints about UPI services by 12:00pm today, with payment failures being the most commonly reported issue.
This comes after two major outages, one at the end of March and another at the beginning of April.
Previous incidents
Recent outages and their impact
The NPCI, which runs the UPI network, had earlier admitted to an "intermittent technical issue" on March 26 that impacted transactions across the country.
Meanwhile, on April 2, Downdetector noted hundreds of outage reports, nearly half of which were related to fund transfers and 44% to payment failures.
Leading payment platforms including Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm, and many banking apps were affected by the outages.
Widespread disruption
UPI outage affects digital transactions across India
The latest UPI outage has once again thrown digital transactions across India out of gear, especially on third-party apps.
Social media platform X was flooded with users reporting failed payments and transaction delays.
The disruption started at 11:26am and peaked by 11:41am when over 222 users flagged issues on Downdetector.
By noon, complaints had spiked to 1,168 - with Google Pay and Paytm being the worst-hit platforms.
Lack of communication
NPCI's response and frequency of UPI outages
Despite the rising complaints, NPCI is yet to address this latest incident.
This is the sixth major UPI outage in the last one year, with one of the most notable being on March 26 when technical issues crippled UPI services for nearly three hours.
Earlier this week, on April 8, NPCI had issued a notice restricting QR code usage for international UPI transactions due to better payer identification needs.