Finance Minister Urges Action After UPI Outages, Sets Goal of 1 Billion Daily Transactions

Highlights

• Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman urged stakeholders to address UPI infrastructure gaps and improve reliability, user experience and cybersecurity.
• Sitharaman set a target of achieving 1 billion daily UPI transactions within 2–3 years, while promoting global acceptance and ecosystem expansion.
• UPI saw a 72% CAGR in transactions from 2019–20 to 2024–25 with ₹261 lakh crore transaction value and 45 crore active users annually.

Caption – Finance Minister urges action after UPI Outages. (Image credit – ToI)

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has asked all key stakeholders, including the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), to work together to fix infrastructure issues following a series of recent UPI outages.

Her comments came during a review meeting held in response to transaction failures on March 26, April 2, and April 12, the third disruption in less than two weeks.

Sitharaman set an ambitious target of reaching one billion UPI transactions per day within the next 2–3 years. She also stressed the importance of improving UPI’s overall reliability, user experience, and cybersecurity.

In a statement posted on Twitter, the Finance Ministry said, “FM Smt. @nsitharaman urged all stakeholders to work collaboratively to address infrastructure gaps, enhance the end-user experience and cybersecurity architecture. The Union Finance Minister directed @NPCI_NPCI to reinforce UPI’s robustness and prevent future disruptions.”

The meeting was attended by key officials including Finance Secretary Ajay Seth, Financial Services Secretary M Nagaraju, and NPCI CEO Dilip Asbe. Discussions focused on boosting UPI’s capacity, ensuring real-time monitoring, and strengthening the system to avoid similar disruptions in the future.

Sitharaman also encouraged efforts to make UPI more widely accepted internationally by developing interoperable systems and expanding its international reach. At the same time, she called for bringing more users and merchants into the UPI ecosystem.

UPI continues to grow rapidly. It recorded a 72% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in transactions between 2019–20 and 2024–25. Meanwhile, 26 crore new users and 5.5 crore merchants joined the platform from 2021–22 and 2024–25 alone.

As of now, UPI boasts 45 crore active users annually. In the financial year 2024–25, the platform handled ₹261 lakh crore in transaction value (up 30%) and 18,586 crore transactions by volume (up 42%).

FAQs

Q1. Why did Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman call for action on UPI?

Answer. She urged stakeholders to fix UPI infrastructure issues after outages on March 26, April 2, and April 12, stressing the need for improved reliability.

Q2. What is the target for UPI daily transactions set by the Finance Minister?

Answer. Sitharaman set a goal of 1 billion daily UPI transactions within the next 2–3 years, aiming to expand UPI’s global reach and merchant adoption.

Q3. How has UPI grown in recent years?

Answer. UPI saw a 72% CAGR in transactions from 2019–20 to 2024–25, reaching ₹261 lakh crore transaction value and 45 crore active users annually.

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