UPI outages traced to tech glitches, backend failures

'Root-cause analysis' done, hardware replaced, member banks briefed on fixes

- AJINKYA KAWALE & SUBRATA PANDA

Network disruptions caused by internet service providers (ISPs) powering India's flagship payments platform, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), hardware malfunctions, and the overloading of banks' transaction processing systems are likely behind the UPI outages over the past two weeks, according to sources.

Telecommunications (telecom) network fluctuations disrupted UPI services on March 26, leaving users across the country unable to process transactions on both banking and third-party UPI applications (apps) for over an hour. A separate technical glitch affecting the software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) led to another outage on April 2.

The success rate of UPI transactions dropped to 50-60 per cent, a source said, adding that the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which operates UPI, carried out a 'root-cause analysis' and shared its findings with member banks.