Context:
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), operator of Unified Payments Interface (UPI), held a high-level meeting with major banks and third-party application providers (TPAPs). The meeting followed multiple UPI outages over a three-week period, notably on March 26, March 31, April 2, and April 12 2025, causing widespread transaction failures and customer inconvenience.
NPCI’s Response and Action Plan
- NPCI announced a “root cause analysis” (RCA) of the April 12 outage, expected to conclude this week.
- NPCI is drafting a detailed “to-do” list for banks and TPAPs to strengthen UPI infrastructure and prevent future disruptions.
- Participants were urged to implement infrastructure upgrades and monitor latency and success rates more rigorously.
Technical Insights into Past Outages
- March 26: NPCI reported intermittent technical issues, leading to partial transaction declines.
- April 1: Financial year-end processing delays caused issues for some banks, although NPCI said UPI was functioning properly overall.
- April 2: NPCI cited success rate fluctuations in some banks, increasing latency across the UPI network.
- April 12: Intermittent technical issues again resulted in partial declines.
Industry Impact and Way Forward
- The outages have led to rising concern from regulators, fintech stakeholders, and users.
- NPCI’s proactive engagement and upcoming action list aim to fortify UPI’s reliability as India’s most widely used real-time payment platform.
- Systemic upgrades and enhanced coordination between banks and TPAPs will be key to preventing future outages.
With UPI at the heart of India’s digital payments ecosystem, ensuring uptime reliability, system resilience, and real-time transaction integrity is critical. NPCI’s push for a structured corrective roadmap signals a move toward long-term infrastructure robustness and stakeholder accountability.
