Minister of Finance Nirmala Sitharaman in action after repeated disruptions UPI services, instructions to the officials

New -Delhi, April 28 (IANS). Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman held a meeting with senior officials on Monday and instructed UPI infrastructure in light of the incidents of the disruption of payment by the Unified Payment Interface (UPI). Apart from the Ministry of Finance, senior officials of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) were present at the meeting. The ministry said that various aspects of the UPI ecosystem were reviewed during the meeting and that the future was discussed. It is noteworthy that UPI services have been disrupted three times over the past a month. The first incident happened on March 26, the second on April 1 and the third on April 12. As a result, people who depended on UPI for payment had to experience many problems. In this context, Ajay Seth, Secretary of Financial Services, M. Nagaraju, the executive director of the RBI, Vivek Deep and NPCI MD and Dilip Asbe, CEO of RBI, was present in the meeting as important. The Minister of Finance has called on users to provide better experiences and to improve the infrastructure errors with stakeholders to improve cyber security architecture. He instructed NPCI officials to increase the strength of the UPI system and take measures to prevent future obstacles. According to the ministry, there was a discussion on reinforcement, expansion and improvement in the real-time monitoring of UPI infrastructure to strengthen the user’s trust by providing uninterrupted service. The tendency of UPI is increasing in the country. The average annual growth rate in five years from FY 2019-20 to 2024-25 was 72 percent. NPCI officials told the finance minister that between 2021-22 and 2024-25, 26 crore new users became new users and that 5.5 crore new trader joined the UPI platforms. Currently, about 45 crore -active users use UPI. In the financial year 2024-25 ended March 31, the price of UPI transactions increased by 30 percent to 261 Lakh Crore calls and the number of transactions increased by 42 percent to 18,586 crore. The Finance Minister has asked officials to achieve the goal of one billion transactions per day in the next two years. At the same time, he also insisted on accelerating the development of restriction framework and increasing the global payment and accelerating the internationalization of UPI. He said they should increase the number of users and traders on the UPI platform to increase the access and impact of UPI. -Ians ECD/DSC shares this story Tags