Sasmit Patra: UPI needs a backup switch before AI agents pile on (opens the source in a new tab)
- Rajya Sabha member Sasmit Patra argues UPI Unified Payments Interface: India's instant mobile payment system, run by NPCI.'s single NPCI switch is its weak spot. In spring 2025 it went down repeatedly when banks flooded it with automated status checks, though both data centres were working.
- RBI's plan for a second operator stalled in 2023, a cap on dominant apps keeps slipping, and NPCI now plans a protocol for AI agent AI software that takes actions on its own, like booking, buying or moving money, not just answering questions. to pay, which could multiply that retry load.
- He wants an independently built standby switch run by a credible body such as RBI's IFTAS, offline fallbacks, and a public report after every outage.
- 80%+
- of India's digital payments run on UPI
Why it matters UPI is how most Indians now pay, so an outage is a national stoppage, not a glitch. Agentic payments add machines that retry relentlessly, the very pattern that broke the switch.
Watch next The 31 December 2026 deadline for capping any single app's share. A second rail doubles cost and coordination, and better retry discipline might fix the actual failure more cheaply.