Google Pay, Paytm transactions fail as UPI suffer outage; netizens narrate experience

The part of the Indian population that has moved from offline to online transactions for the smallest of the small things suffered a jolt when the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) instant payment service Unified Payment Interface (UPI) suffered a brief outage on Sunday. During the outage that lasted for over an hour, all online payments from services like Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm resulted in failed transactions with notifications like 'server not available', 'can't process transaction', 'try again' among others. 

"Regret the inconvenience to #UPI users due to intermittent technical glitch," said NCPI on Twitter, It added, "UPI is operational now, and we are monitoring the system closely."

Netizens vent frustration

The internet was taken by a storm with the emergence of the unforeseen situation, with many narrating their miseries. A man, purportedly shopping groceries, wrote, "Tried paying with PhonePe, failed, tried again with GooglePay, the same result, Thought it was some network issue, but turns out entire UPI is down." Another wrote, "Gone to a restaurant but I neither have any cash nor card, only the option for UPI which was down. I was embarrassed at that moment."

There were others who highlighted how people were realising the value of UPI now that it had stopped working. 

Image: Shutterstock/Twitter