PhonePe confirmed an outage due to network capacity shortfall.
Users also reported payment issues on Gpay and Paytm, likely due to high traffic.
Social Media Reaction: Users are sharing memes and complaints on X with the hashtag #UPIdown.
On Monday evening, many users experienced problems while making online fund transfers, primarily through PhonePe. Initially mistaken as a widespread UPI outage, the problem turned out to be a PhonePe-specific outage caused by a network capacity shortfall. This comes after the company issued a clarification after thousands of users reported issues with online payments.
During the peak of the outage, we also tried to make payments with PhonePe, but it displayed a message saying that the ‘UPI app is experiencing some issues.’ The app also requested that we try sending money to the recipient’s other account. The FAQ page stated that if your money has been deducted, it will be returned to your designated bank accounts within a few business days.
Taking to X, Rahul Chari, Co-founder and CTO of PhonePe stated, “Given the escalation of the conflict last week, at PhonePe we initiated active DR drills, with heightened cybersecurity measures on our network firewall. This evening, 100% of our traffic across all our services was being served through a new data center. Unfortunately, the Monday evening peak traffic exposed a network capacity shortfall due to which transactions started failing.”
“We have now rebalanced our traffic across our other sites and are seeing the recovery. Our apologies for this. We assure to take these learnings and further strengthen our systems,” he added.
According to Downdetector, over 900 reports have been submitted, with over 80% complaining about the fund transfer, 20% about the application, and 2% about the payments. However, the services are now fully functional and back to normal.
Frustrated users took to X and began sharing posts. Some people have found humour in the current situation, sharing memes, videos, and opinions with the hashtag #UPIDown. Here are some memes and posts shared by X trolling users from Paytm, PhonePe, and Gpay.
Use cards , upi down is common these days
— Richie issrani (@Richieissrani) May 12, 2025
UPI down
— SATYAM SHUKLA (@satyamshuk21) May 12, 2025
guys upi kaam ni krra h
this 30yo grown man always broke with his upi qr on tl for ppl to send him money umm
— down bad (@coneyisland4eva) May 12, 2025
UPI DOWN HAI KYA????
— Lumin⁷🐣 | ᶠᵘᵗᵘʳᵉ'ˢ ᵍᵒⁿⁿᵃ ᵇᵉ ᵒᵏᵃʸ '²⁵ (@jmnsmin) May 12, 2025
While the problem was PhonePe specific, many users were unable to make payments through Gpay and Paytm as well. However, that could be because of increased load on these platforms and not because of any larger issue with NPCI-managed UPI.
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Ashish Singh
Ashish Singh is the Chief Copy Editor at Digit. He's been wrangling tech jargon since 2020 (Times Internet, Jagran English '22). When not policing commas, he's likely fueling his gadget habit with coffee, strategising his next virtual race, or plotting a road trip to test the latest in-car tech. He speaks fluent Geek. View Full Profile
