Make UPI robust to prevent disruptions, FM Nirmala Sitharaman tells NPCI

UPI, India's real-time payments system, faced a fourth glitch in more than two weeks on April 12

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday directed action to make the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system more robust, and ensure there is no repeat of the multiple disruptions experienced by users earlier this month.

 

The finance minister stressed this to officials concerned during a meeting to review various aspects and the way forward for the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) ecosystem in New Delhi. The meeting was attended by senior officials from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), along with Finance Secretary Ajay Seth, Department of Financial Services Secretary M Nagaraju.

 

“Discussions focused on enhancing the resilience, scalability, and real-time monitoring of the UPI infrastructure to ensure uninterrupted service delivery and strengthen user trust,” the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

 

 

She urged all stakeholders to work collaboratively to address infrastructure gaps, enhance the end-user experience and cybersecurity architecture, and directed the NPCI to reinforce UPI’s robustness and prevent future disruptions, the statement noted. 

 

UPI, India’s real-time payments system, faced glitches for the fourth time in a little over two weeks on April 12. The NPCI had attributed these failures to “intermittent technical issues”.

 

Cumulatively, the UPI system was down for 282 minutes across two partial and intermittent incidents, NPCI data shows. These included one in January 2022 which lasted 187 minutes and another in March 2025 lasting for 95 minutes.

 

Sitharaman also called for achieving one billion per day UPI transactions milestone in the next two-three years, while addressing infrastructure gaps and enhancing end-user experience. She also encouraged officials to intensify efforts to on-board more users and merchants on the UPI platform to broaden its reach and impact.

 

According to NPCI data, the UPI network processed over 590 million transactions daily on average in March. Between FY20 and FY25, UPI transactions registered a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 72 per cent.

 

The minister also emphasised the importance of accelerating the internationalisation of UPI through the development of interoperable frameworks and expanding its global payment acceptance.

 

NPCI officials told FM Sitharaman that between FY22 and FY25, around 260 million new users and 55 million new merchants have been successfully on-boarded on the UPI platform. UPI now has approximately 450 million annually active users.

 

In FY25, UPI transactions amounted to ~261 trillion, a 30 per cent Y-o-Y growth. Similarly, in terms of volume, 18,586 crore transactions took place in FY25, a 42 per cent Y-o-Y growth.

 

Limiting API calls

 

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has directed members of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) network to adhere to a set of guidelines on API calls, the overuse of which resulted in an outage of the real-time payments system earlier this month.

 

In a circular, the retail payments body said that payment service provider (PSP) banks and acquiring banks must monitor and moderate API (application programming interface) requests sent to UPI to ensure appropriate usage.

 

This includes restricting a high number of repeat API calls for the same or older transactions.

 

Members have been instructed to comply with the new guidelines, failing which they may face action, including penal provisions.

 

NPCI has directed banks to initiate the “first check transaction status API” after 90 seconds from the authentication of the original transaction.

 

"After the timers are changed (ref. UPI OC 214, dated 26th April, 2025), members may initiate the same after 45 to 60 seconds of the initiation/authentication of the original transaction, following NPCI’s revised communication," the circular stated.

 

Business Standard has reviewed a copy of the circular sent to UPI members.

 

PSP banks and acquiring banks have been asked to initiate a maximum of three check transaction status APIs, preferably within two hours of the initiation/authentication of the original transaction.

 

NPCI may also consider implementing rate limiters on select UPI APIs in consultation with the steering committee and subject to further approvals over time.

 

(Inputs from Ajinkya Kawale in Mumbai)