April 12 UPI Outage: What Caused the Payment Failures and How NPCI Responded

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system in India faced intermittent technical issues on Saturday, April 12, which led to partial UPI transaction declines across the country, as per a tweet by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).NPCI is currently facing intermittent technical issues, leading to partial UPI transaction declines. We are working to resolve the issue, and will keep you updated.

We regret the inconvenience caused.— NPCI (@NPCI_NPCI) April 12, 2025Users attempting to make payments mostly received payment failure messages, while some even got debit alerts despite failed transactions.The situation came back under NPCI’s control by late afternoon, with the umbrella organisation in charge of the UPI network claiming to be monitoring the situation closely.



UPI services have been stable since late afternoon, and NPCI continues to monitor the situation closely. We regret the inconvenience caused and thank you for your patience.— NPCI (@NPCI_NPCI) April 12, 2025This latest outage, which comes close on the heels of three such instances since March 26, affected most of India’s major payment platforms, such as Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm.

According to DownDetector, which tracks outages on popular platforms, user complaints for UPI services rose to more than 2,000 around Saturday noon.Gambling Driving Up UPI Transactions?Some banking professionals attributed the UPI outage to a sudden spike in gaming and betting activity in recent weeks.The ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL), the world’s most popular T20 cricket league, drives up the participation on UPI platforms, in turn increasing the volume of transactions.

NPCI data for March 2025 illustrated that the UPI platform witnessed 18 billion payments for that month, much higher than the 16 billion reported in the previous three months.Furthermore in April, daily transactions climbed to over 600 million, significantly higher than usual daily volume of around 500 million.Notably, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had conceptualised the idea of a National Umbrella Entity (NUE) to reduce the risk of concentration on NPCI, in order to prevent such UPI outages.

However, the proposal was eventually shelved.There is also an ongoing debate about concentration risk on UPI, as PhonePe and Google Pay alone account for almost 80% of the market share on the payments interface.Why It MattersThis latest UPI outage raises serious questions about the digital payments landscape in India.

The country has witnessed three such incidents recently, with the first occurring on March 26.The last major UPI outage happened five years ago, when the RBI placed Yes Bank, then a key service provider for digital payments apps such as PhonePe, under a moratorium.The fallout back then led NPCI to propose market share caps in order to mitigate single point-of-failure risks.

However, UPI’s operation under a zero MDR (merchant discount rate) mandate from the Centre has made it difficult for banks and fintechs to invest in scaling up their platforms.MediaNama has reached out to the NPCI for comment and will update the story when the NPCI responds.Also Read:UPI Crash Leaves Users Stranded: Is NPCI’s Monopoly a Weak Link?NPCI Pushes Ahead With BHIM 3.

0, But Concerns Over Neutrality PersistUPI Outages: Banks’ Technical Issues at Fault, not NPCI, RBI Governor SaysThe post April 12 UPI Outage: What Caused the Payment Failures and How NPCI Responded appeared first on MEDIANAMA..