Following recent disruptions in the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has called for urgent, collective action to strengthen infrastructure and achieve the ambitious goal of one billion daily UPI transactions within the next two to three years.
The review meeting was convened in response to a series of outages that caused transaction failures on March 26, April 2, and April 12—the third disruption within a fortnight. Sitharaman directed the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to improve UPI’s reliability, enhance the user experience, and fortify cybersecurity measures to prevent future service interruptions.
She also stressed the importance of expanding UPI’s global footprint through interoperable frameworks and boosting international payment acceptance, alongside efforts to onboard more users and merchants.
“FM Smt. @nsitharaman urged all stakeholders to work collaboratively to address infrastructure gaps, enhance the end-user experience, and reinforce cybersecurity architecture. The Union Finance Minister directed @NPCI_NPCI to further strengthen UPI’s robustness and prevent future disruptions,” the finance ministry said in a statement on Twitter.
The meeting was reportedly attended by Finance Secretary Ajay Seth, Financial Services Secretary M Nagaraju, and NPCI CEO Dilip Asbe. Discussions focused on enhancing UPI’s resilience, scalability, and real-time monitoring capabilities to ensure seamless service delivery and uphold user trust.
UPI has experienced a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 72% in transaction volume from 2019-20 to 2024-25. During the period from 2021-22 to 2024-25, 26 crore new users and 5.5 crore merchants joined the platform, with 45 crore annually active users. In 2024-25 alone, UPI recorded ₹261 lakh crore in transaction value—a 30% year-on-year growth—and processed 18,586 crore transactions by volume, marking a 42% growth.
