Mumbai: A major disruption impacted India’s digital payments ecosystem on Saturday as several UPI apps and banking services suffered outages, leaving users unable to send or receive money. The issue began around 1 PM and quickly escalated, with over 2,324 outage reports submitted on Downdetector, a platform that tracks service disruptions using user-generated data.
Users of major platforms such as Google Pay, Paytm, State Bank of India (SBI), HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, and Bank of India reported a range of issues including payment failures, fund transfer glitches, and problems accessing mobile banking features. Google Pay alone saw 465 complaints, primarily related to failed transactions. Paytm received 60 reports, about 60% of which were tied to similar payment issues. SBI, India’s largest public sector bank, was hit harder with 814 reports, two-thirds of them linked to online banking failures. HDFC Bank had 103 reports, mostly centered around bill payments and online services, while Axis Bank received 79 user reports and Bank of India 69—both reflecting mobile and fund transfer complaints.
UPI, or Unified Payments Interface, is a real-time payment system developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). It has become the backbone of digital transactions in India, handling billions of transactions monthly. However, today’s disruption once again raised questions over the robustness and reliability of the country’s digital financial infrastructure.
Great line up. We will be linking to this great article on our site. Keep up the good writing.