Time to pull out wallets, UPI ditches users again

Hyderabad:It was time to people to pull out their wallets or head to the nearest ATM yet again on Saturday, when the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) failed for several hours from 1 pm. This is the third time in a month that the system has failed.

Street vendors and kiosk owners, those that do not operate card machines and depend on UPI or cash payments, were the hardest hit. A paan seller near Secunderabad said many of his customers were unable to pay."Transactions did not go through at all. People kept trying and left saying they would pay later.”

P. Jahnavi, a resident of Dilsukhnagar, ran into an unexpected problem: “I had lunch at a restaurant, but couldn't pay since UPI was down. I tried for several minutes. I finally had to keep my handbag with the owner as security and had to bring money from an ATM.” Coincidentally, the card machine at the outlet had conked out.

At the airport, a passenger did not have cash to pay the cabbie. With the UPI system out, he had to rush to an ATM to draw cash. At houses, families found they had to dig up small change to pay workers who had carried out petty cash.

Cyberspace exploded with outrage as users began realising they could not scan the QR codes and make payments. ‘ampantharsam’ from Hyderabad, posted, "All receivers are with UPI so I cannot send money. Always carry cash guys.” He said he had gone to an eatery to buy his lunch. “It was like 30 people went back without ordering."

Naseem MD tagged the TGSRTC and and complained that no Rajadhani bus driver from Hanamkonda to Hyderabad was accepting UPI payments.

Some sought additional help. User Sharan asked the AI platform Grok on X, "Hey, grok Why all UPI's are down today in Hyderabad, Telangana, India (sic)." Grok replied, "Hey, UPI services were down in Hyderabad today due to nationwide technical issues, as confirmed by NPCI.”

In a statement, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which operates the UPI infrastructure, acknowledged the issue and said, " We are working to resolve the issue.”

UPI has suffered three outages in the past 30 days, and several people have raised concerns about the reliability of the platform that has become the backbone of India’s digital payment ecosystem.

While the NPCI has not specified the cause of the outage, services have resumed by early evening on Saturday.