UPI Outage: NPCI Blames Banks For The Technical Issue

Unified Payments Interface (UPI) faced a major outage on Tuesday (February 6) knocking down digital payments services in many parts of the country. 

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which operates UPI, confirmed the development in a post on X. It, however, attributed the outage to ‘some technical issues’ on the side of partner banks. 

“Regret inconvenience on UPI connectivity as few of the banks are having some internal technical issues. NPCI systems are working fine and we are working with these banks to ensure quick resolution,” said NPCI.

The response came after users flooded social media platforms with complaints of facing issues while making UPI payments. 

“Oh my goodness, today I was on the verge of getting insulted. With no cash in my wallet, all my #upi apps were not working at the same time, I was stunned. Trust me that was quite scary…,” said a user. 

Another user commented, “When UPI is down, the only thing going up is anxiety about having no cash. Always keep some notes handy!”

According to DownDetector, the issue peaked around 9 PM when it logged 127 reports of users facing issues with digital fund transfers.

Meanwhile, a senior bank official told The Economic Times that the issue had impacted some payments, adding that they were trying to figure out the reason behind the outage. 

As per the report, Kotak Mahindra Bank, HDFC Bank, Bank of Baroda and Google Pay were primarily hit by the outages. 

In a statement, HDFC Bank said that it faced difficulties due to ‘some multi-bank system issues.’

“We experienced some difficulties on UPI due to some multi-bank system issues. We are back in operations now and regret any inconvenience faced,” said the bank official.

The development comes at a time when UPI has seen rapid adoption among the Indian public in the past few years, banking on its ease of access and interoperability. However, the current fracas is expected to make users wary and could raise questions about the efficacy of the platform even if the issues were attributed to the banks. 

Despite this, UPI continues to be a popular choice. The payments infrastructure clocked more than 1,220 Cr transactions worth INR 18.41 Lakh Cr in January 2024. NPCI plans to scale the number of monthly transactions beyond the 10,000 Cr-mark in the near future. 

With an eye on spurring digital payments, it has launched a slew of new offerings, including offline NFC-based payment options such as UPI LITE X and Tap & Pay and conversational payment solutions like Hello! UPI and BillPay Connect.