State Bank of India (SBI) continues to face disruption in providing Unified Payments Interface (UPI) services for the third day on Monday. The bank last Saturday alerted its millions of customers about potential disruptions to its UPI services due to an ongoing tech upgrade.
“The bank has taken technology upgradation, due to which SBI customers may face intermittent fluctuations in (the) bank’s UPI service. We deeply regret the inconvenience (and) apologize for the inconvenience caused to you. We will update soon,” read a SBI social media post on October 14, 2023. The same day, a user wrote, “Dear RBI, please investigate and give a heavy penalty to SBI for keeping the UPI system down for days.”
There is no update yet on the UPI issue, despite an assurance from the bank to provide the same soon. Meanwhile, users vented their frustrations on social media platforms. One user on Monday wrote, “Now it's been 3 days, SBI UPI not working,” while another added, “Balance can’t be fetched, and money can’t be sent. It’s been 3 days, and no effort to correct the issue.”
UPI is pivotal to India’s digital payment landscape, with a staggering 10 billion transactions in September 2023, accounting for 81 per cent of all digital transactions in the country.
To mitigate the impact of such disruptions, SBI customers can explore UPI Lite, an offline method for UPI transactions. Under UPI Lite, users can transact up to Rs 4,000 daily, with instant transactions capped at Rs 500, without inputting a PIN. Although linked to users’ bank accounts, UPI Lite accounts operate independently of the real-time core banking system, so payment failures stemming from processing glitches are minimal. In addition, users can use UPI wallets to store and use funds for urgent transactions.
