India’s digital payment ecosystem was once again thrown into disarray on Saturday, April 12th as the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) faced a widespread outage. Users across the country reported failed transactions and delays, particularly while using popular platforms like Google Pay, Paytm, and PhonePe.
According to data from DownDetector, the disruption began around 11:26 AM and intensified within 15 minutes. By 11:41 AM, over 222 users had already flagged issues, and by noon, the number of complaints had surged to 1,168. Of these, 96 were linked to Google Pay and 23 to Paytm, as per an India TV report. Social media platform X also witnessed a flood of users voicing frustration over delayed or failed payments.
Despite the spike in complaints, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which manages the UPI infrastructure, has yet to issue an official statement or explanation regarding the glitch.
This is the sixth major UPI outage in the past year. The most significant occurred on March 26, when UPI services were down for nearly three hours, severely affecting both consumers and businesses relying on real-time transactions.
The latest disruption comes just days after NPCI issued a notice on April 8 restricting the use of UPI QR codes for international transactions. The move was aimed at enhancing payer identification measures. However, domestic UPI QR payments remain unaffected.
As UPI continues to be the backbone of India’s digital payments, repeated outages raise concerns over system stability and user trust.
