Overview

• India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) experienced its third major outage in less than a month on May 12, disrupting transactions nationwide.
• Users of Paytm, Google Pay, and PhonePe reported failed or delayed payments, with Downdetector showing a surge in complaints during the outage.
• The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which oversees UPI, has not yet issued an explanation for the latest disruption.
• The outage follows record UPI usage in March 2025, with over 18.3 billion transactions valued at Rs 24.77 lakh crore, highlighting growing reliance on digital payments.
• This disruption comes shortly after the government announced a Rs 1,500 crore incentive to encourage small vendors to adopt UPI via the BHIM app.