Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman urged measures to strengthen the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system and guarantee that users do not face the same disruptions they encountered earlier this month.

The finance minister emphasized this to relevant officials during a meeting to evaluate different aspects and the future direction of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) ecosystem in New Delhi. Senior officials from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) attended the meeting, which was also joined by Finance Secretary Ajay Seth and 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 says.

The minister called on all stakeholders to collaborate in tackling infrastructure deficiencies, improving the user experience and cybersecurity framework, and instructed the NPCI to strengthen UPI’s resilience and avert future interruptions.

UPI, India's instant payment system, encountered issues for the fourth time in just over two weeks on April 12. The NPCI explained that these failures were due to sporadic technical problems.

Overall, data from NPCI indicates that the UPI system experienced downtime for 282 minutes due to two separate and intermittent incidents. These consisted of one in January 2022 that lasted 187 minutes and another in March 2025 with duration of 95 minutes.

Nirmala additionally advocated for reaching the milestone of one billion UPI transactions daily within the next two to three years, while tackling infrastructure deficiencies and improving end-user satisfaction. She likewise urged officials to enhance efforts to onboard additional users and merchants onto the UPI platform to expand its reach and effectiveness.

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 percent.

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