FM Nirmala Sitharaman asks NPCI to address infra gaps to curb UPI outages

30 Apr 2025, 11:03 PM

Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitharaman chaired a meeting to review various aspects and the way ahead for the UPI ecosystem.

Team Head&Tale

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday directed the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and other stakeholders to strengthen the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) infrastructure amid an increase in transaction disruptions.

Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitharaman chaired a meeting to review various aspects and the way ahead for the UPI ecosystem. The meeting was attended by key officials including Finance Secretary Ajay Seth, Financial Services Secretary M Nagaraju, RBI Executive Director Vivek Deep, and NPCI CEO Dilip Asbe.

The FM urged all stakeholders to work collaboratively to address infrastructure gaps, enhance the end-user experience and cybersecurity architecture. 

"The Union Finance Minister directed NPCI  to reinforce UPI’s robustness and prevent future disruptions," the finance ministry said in post on X.

The directive comes in the wake of multiple UPI outages from March to April 2025, with the latest one reported on April 12.

Sitharaman reiterated the government’s target of reaching 1 billion UPI transactions daily within the next two to three years and also stressed on the importance of accelerating the internationalisation of UPI through the development of interoperable frameworks and expanding global payment acceptance.

NPCI informed the FM that UPI added 26 crore new users and 5.5 crore merchants between FY22 and FY25. The platform currently has nearly 45 crore annually active users. In March 2025 alone, UPI processed a record 1,830 crore transactions worth Rs 24.77 lakh crore, marking double-digit growth month-on-month.

The FM also urged officials to push for broader user and merchant onboarding to deepen UPI adoption.